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HENRY DAVID THOREAU 



WALDEN 



OR 

LIFE IN THE WOODS 

BY 

HENRY DAVID THOREAU 

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

BY 

BYRON REES 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH 
WILLIAMS COLLEGE 



" I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still 
on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, 
describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met 
one or two who had lieard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and 
even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as 
anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves." 



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WALDEN 



<K. 



-^\ 



SANBORN GOVE TENNEY 



INTRODUCTION 

David Henry Thoreau, or Henry David Thoreau, as 
he preferred to call himself, was born in Concord, Massa- 
chusetts, July 12, 1817, and died there May 6, 1862. 
His father, John Thoreau, the son of a John Thoreau of 
the island of Jersey who emigrated to America about 1773, 
was a skilful pencil-maker in Concord. The mother was 
Cynthia Dunbar, daughter of a minister, a quick-witted, 
handsome woman who sang well and talked even better ; 
it was from her, rather than from the half-French father, 
that Henry derived his intellectual alertness and energy. 

The Concord of the "twenties" was a quiet, unspoiled 
New England village, one of those sterling communities 
whence, during the last century, came so much that has 
made the history of the intellectual life in Massachusetts 
notable and fine. It was a place of winding streams and 
shady roads, of woodland and meadow and hill and pond — 
such a region as one would fix upon as the fitting and con- 
genial environment of the boy who was to be the author 
of Walden. There is nothing grand or striking about the 
locality ; the far-travelled, indefatigable tourist often finds 
it "tame" and "commonplace." Walden Pond is pretty, 
but not extraordinary; there are in Massachusetts hun- 
dreds of ponds as attractive. Fairhaven Bay, Brister's 
Hill, Baker's Farm, the Virginia road. Well-meadow, 
Mill Brook, all owe their interest to the associations of 
literature, rather than to any unusual qualities of their 
own. The country is pleasing, pretty, restful, but that 

ix 



Xll INTRODUCTION 

ishment clashed with those of the persons in authority. 
He wisely forsook the teacher's desk and entered upon a 
life of varied activity, — at times of picturesque and joyous 
inactivity. For a while he stayed at Emerson's house; 
he surveyed ; he made pencils ; he lectured ; he lived in a 
hut at Walden Pond; he tramped about, looking at the 
world with clear eyes. Sometimes he played with children, 
or wrote in his Journal, or talked with passers-by, prefer- 
ably strong, acrid characters whose originality appealed 
to him ; always, whatever the occupation of the moment, 
bent upon developing his own nature, upon living his own 
life, and conveying through his pen to others some intima- 
tion of the vision that he saw. 

It is not difficult for us to picture to ourselves the Thoreau 
of these years, for his contemporaries have given us many 
descriptions of him. Mr. Frank Sanborn, one of his biogra- 
phers, met him in 1855, and this is the note in which he 
recorded his impression : — 

"To-night we had a call from Mr. Thoreau, who came at 
eight and stayed till ten. He talked about Latin and 
Greek — which he thought ought to be studied — and 
about other things. In his tones and gestures he seemed 
to me to imitate Emerson, so that it was annoying to listen 
to him, though he said many good things. He looks 
like Emerson, too, — coarser, but with something of that 
serenity and sagacity which E. has. Thoreau looks 
eminently sagacious — like a sort of wise, wild beast. 
He. dresses plainly, wears a beard in his throat, and has a 
brown complexion.'' 

In another place Mr. Sanborn adds : — 

"He is a little under size, with a huge Emersonian nose, 
bluish grdy eyes, brown hair, and a ruddy, weather- 
beaten face, which reminds me of some shrewd and honest 



INTRODUCTION Xlll 

animal's — some retired philosophical woodchiick or 
magnanimous fox. He dresses very plainly, wears his 
collar turned over like Mr. Emerson, and often an old 
dress-coat, broad in the skirts, and by no means a fit." 

Ellery Channing, author of Thoreau, the Poet-Natural- 
ist, devotes attention to the face : — 

"His face, once seen, could not be forgotten. The 
features were quite marked: the nose aquiline, or very 
Roman, hke one of the portraits of Caesar (more like a beak, 
as was said) ; large overhanging brows above the deep-set 
blue eyes — blue in certain lights, and in others gray — 
eyes expressive of all shades of feeling, but never weak 
or near-sighted ; the forehead not unusually broad or 
high, full of concentrated energy of purpose; the mouth 
with prominent lips, pursed up wuth meaning and thought 
when silent, and giving out when open a stream of the 
most varied and unusual and instructive sayings. His 
whole figure had an active earnestness, as if he had no 
moment to waste. Even in the boat he had a wary, 
transitory air, his eyes on the outlook — perhaps there 
might be ducks, or the Blondin turtle, or an otter, or 
sparrow." 

Emerson characteristically combines external descrip- 
tion with indications of manner and conversation when 
afield : " He knew how to sit immovable, a part of the rock 
he rested on, until the bird, the reptile, the fish, which 
had retired from him, should come back and resume its 
habits, nay, moved by curiosity, should come to him and 
watch him. 

"It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him. 
He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed 
through it as freely by paths of his own. He knew 
every track in the snow or on the ground, and what crea- 



XVI INTRODUCTION 

But the communistic type of life failed to appeal to him. 
He saw in it a grave danger, the loss of independence, 
the strangling grip of unavoidable companionship ; com- 
munism, he felt, menaced individuality. He therefore 
turned to another possible solution of the problem. 

We are in error if we suppose that there was much of the 
hermit in Thoreau even during the two years of his life 
at Walden. He never intended actually to break off 
relations with his fellows. He was no misanthrope, no 
Diogenes. "Every day or two I strolled to the village 
to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on 
there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from 
newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic 
doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle 
of leaves and the peeping of frogs." The withdrawal to 
the hut did not destroy his love of conversation, or of the 
society of congenial men and women, and he was quite 
as frequent a visitor at sympathetic firesides as before he 
entered upon his novel life. 

It is easy for the public to fall into the error of augment- 
ing the interest of a personality by distortion. Thoreau as 
a cold, misanthropic hermit, for some reason seems more 
impressive to the average reader than the real Thoreau. 
James Lane Allen makes his ''Adam Moss" say, "Every- 
thing that I can find of his (Thoreau's) is as pure and cold 
and lonely as a wild cedar of the mountain rocks, standing 
far above its smokeless valley and hushed white river." 
And yet we know that this "wild cedar" was the favorite 
of children, and that he loved them passionately. Some of 
the biographers quote the contemporary of Thoreau who 
said, "I love Henry, but I cannot Hke him; and as for 
taking his arm I should as soon think of taking the arm 
of an elm tree," and yet it was this *' elm tree " whose affec- 



INTRODUCTION XVll 

tion for his brother is one of the most beautiful of things — 
an unselfish affection that made him yield to John Thoreau 
the woman whom he himself loved. ''He is as yet a 
somewhat bare hill which the warm gales of spring have 
not visited," wrote Margaret Fuller, but it w^as Thoreau 
who sympathetically and manfully spoke out in defence of 
John Brown. Trees and hills are doubtless at times ex- 
cellent metaphors, but they do not invariably suggest all 
the truth. 

Thoreau, then, was not the cold, remote man that he is 
sometimes pictured; he was no unfeeling stoic. The 
student who lives with his books for a time finds that in 
his temperament there was little of ''crabbed age," much 
of impulsive, full-blooded " youth.'' " There is a lot of the 
boy in him," said a friend, and the title is not altogether 
inappropriate. In New England, certainly, the boy who 
hkes to be alone at times, who finds the woods and fields 
more interesting than games, who gets a kind of joy 
out of eluding the eyes and escaping the thoughts of other 
boys, is not unknown, and this phase of boyishness in 
Thoreau persisted throughout his life. He seems, too, to 
delight in shocking people. He " talks big " for the sheer 
fun of it. "I would not run round the corner to see the 
world blow up," he says grandiloquently. "After which 
statement," remarks Mr. Bradford Torrey, "the reader 
whose bump of incuriosity is less highly developed may 
console himself by remembering that when a powder 
mill blew up in the next town, Thoreau, hearing the noise, 
ran downstairs, jumped into a wagon, and drove post-haste 
to the scene of the disaster." "I trust you realize," 
he writes to a correspondent, "what an exaggerator I am 
— that I lay myself out to exaggerate." It is the boy in 
him that "would brag as lustily as Chanticleer in the 



XX INTRODUCTION 

after considerable difficulty, he secured its publication, 
but it did not sell, and nothing is more in keeping with the 
nature of the man than his courageous banter at the 
outcome, when the unsalable copies were returned to 
him: — 

"The wares are sent to me at last, and I have an oppor- 
tunity to examine my purchase. They are something 
more substantial than fame, as my back knows, which has 
borne them up two flights of stairs to a place similar to that 
to which they trace their origin. Of the remaining two 
hundred ninety and odd, seventy-five were given away, the 
rest sold. I have now a library of nearly nine hundred 
volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself. 
Is it not well that the author should behold the fruits of 
his labor ? My works are piled up in my chamber, half as 
high as my head, my o'pera omnia J^ 

Much of W olden, too, was written at the Pond, for many 
passages incorporated in it are from the Journal which he 
was already keeping wdth the greatest regularity. Walden 
was published in 1854, but his other books, such as Ex- 
cursions (1863), The Maine Woods (1864), Cape Cod (1865) , 
A Yankee in Canada (1866), Earhj Spring in Massachu- 
setts (1881), Summer (1884), Winter (1888), Autumn 
(1892), were made up by relatives or friends from articles 
that had appeared in Putnam's Magazine, The Atlantic 
Monthly, The Dial, and other periodicals, or from selections 
from the voluminous Journal. In 1906 the superb " Manu- 
script Edition " of Thoreau appeared and, as it contained 
the Journal, placed at the disposal of the reader practically 
all that he wrote. 

Not all of Thoreau's sentences are "as durable as a 
Roman aqueduct"; not all his books, it may be, will be 
read with pleasure a hundred years from to-day, but 



IN TR ODUCTION xxi 

some of them will be cherished indefinitely. Not only 
Walden, but Cape Cod certainly and possibly the Week 
will have their admirers so long as American literature 
endures. In spite of incoherence, of unseemly paradox, 
of crass egotism, his work, "veined,'' as it is, ''with pure 
gold," commands, and will continue to command, the 
affection of thoughtful readers. And there are adequate 
reasons for this. There is in them the appeal of deep 
seriousness ; they are the product of a man "at grips with 
things." To Thoreau life is fraught with problems, 
with problems demanding a man's best, most energetic 
consideration. Artificiality, affectation, false values, con- 
formity, superstition — these things trammel the free 
upstanding soul of man. A true Romanticist, he would 
call us "back to Nature," would free us from all that en- 
cumbers and degrades. He can reach us only through the 
printed page and his conception of the function of books 
is therefore exacting. "Books, not which afford us a 
cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of un- 
usual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a 
timid one would not be entertained by, which even make 
us dangerous to existing institutions — such I call good 
books." It was to the creation of such books that 
Thoreau devoted the best that was in him. 

In spite of the carelessness in details that Thoreau 
sometimes shows, he was deeply impressed with the magni- 
tude of the responsibility as an artist that the author 
assumes. Writing is with him a great art, worthy of all 
labor, of all tension of mind and heart. His love of con- 
centration in diction and his zeal for entire fidelity in 
exposition appear in a letter to a friend : — 

"Let me suggest a theme for you — to state to yourse'f 
precisely and completely what that walk over the moualaiii; 



XXIV INTRODUCTION 

and doggerel, and one finds him gravely printing such 
things as, 

" What's the railroad to me ? 

I never go to see 

Where it ends." 

Though the name of Thoreau invariably suggests nature 
and the observation of natural phenomena, Thoreau 's 
reputation will not rest upon his work as a naturalist. 
He was not a scientist in the modern sense, though he 
possessed many of the qualifications of the scientist. He 
had the keen eye, for example, as is suggested by the 
anecdote of the arrowhead. "I do not see where you find 
your Indian arrowheads," a friend who was walking with 
him remarked. ''Here is one," was the quick reply, 
as he picked one up and handed it to his companion. 
"Thoreau had a pair of eyes," says Holmes, "which, 
like those of the Indian deity, could see the smallest emmet 
on the blackest stone in the darkest night, — or come 
nearer to seeing it than those of most mortals." But the 
scientist of high order must be able not only to see, but to 
see patiently and continuously, and to correct his observa- 
tions by one another, and to draw his conclusions with- 
out hyperbole. The boyish desire to see things others 
had not seen led Thoreau sometimes to deceive himself, 
and with him many a bird and beast passed, at least for 
a time, under a false name. 

"Poet-naturalist," his friend Channing called Thoreau, 
and we are justified in stressing the first member of the 
epithet, for his relation to Nature is that of one who seeks 
to live in her benign presence, who finds in her not material 
for classification, but a person for comfortable companion- 
ship, a guide to higher human living, and a constant inspira- 
tion to noble thought. From the natural phenomenon 



INTRODUCTION XXV 

he is ever springing an arch that reaches into the eternities. 
That which is visible and ponderable suggests that which 
transcends experience. The response of the plant to the 
rain reminds him of the growth of the soul : — 

"A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades 
greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of 
better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in 
the present always, and took advantage of every acci- 
dent that befell us, like the grass which confesses the 
influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did 
not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past 
opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter 
in winter while it is already spring. In a pleasant spring 
morning all men's sins are forgiven. Such a day is a 
truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the 
vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered 
innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. 
You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a 
thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or 
despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun 
shines bright and warm this first spring morning, recreating 
the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see 
how his exhausted and debauched veins expand with still 
joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence vith 
the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. 
There is not only an atmosphere of good-will about him, 
but even a savor of holiness groping for expression, 
blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born instinct, 
and for a short hour the south hillside echoes to no vulgar 
jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to 
burst from his gnarled rind and try another year's life, 
tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has 
entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer does not 



XXViil INTRODUCTION 

duty to stand, foursquare and unflinching, in his defence, 
and such championship is superfluous "only as glory is 
superfluous, or a bit of red ribbon that a man would die 
to win." 

In spite of much that is unlovely and repellent, Thoreau 
makes his appeal to us and is an invaluable force in our 
modern life. The tendency, perhaps now stronger than 
ever before, is toward uniformity. Men find it easy to go 
in crowds; few dare to differ from their fellows, to be 
themselves, to live their own lives. "The surface of the 
earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men ; and so 
with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and 
dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep 
the ruts of tradition and conformity ! I did not wish to 
take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and 
on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moon- 
light amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now." 
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, per- 
haps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him 
step to the music that he hears however measured or far 
away." Thoreau has made it a little easier for the man of 
to-day to ignore the worship of "Britannia of the Market- 
place, the Goddess of Getting On," for him to "settle 
accounts with his mind," to achieve a vision that reaches 
beyond his immediate surroundings. 

President Jordan tells of meeting in Wisconsin a certain 
Barney Muflins who had known Henry Thoreau in Concord. 
Said Mullins, "Mr. Thoreau was a land-surveyor in Con- 
cord. I knew him well. He had a way of his own, and 
he didn't ^care naught about money ; but if there was ever 
a gentleman alive, he was one." A "way of his own," 
indifferent to "money," a "gentleman" — such was the 
impression he made. "As free and erect a mind as I 



INTRODUCTION XXIX 

have met," says Emerson, and he adds, " His soul was made 
for the noblest society; he had in a short hfe exhausted 
the capabilities of this world ; wherever there is knowledge, 
wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will 
find a home.'' 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The standard edition of Thoreau is the ''Manuscript 
Edition " (Boston, 1906). Though this is the only edition 
containing the Journal, Thoreau 's other books are con- 
veniently accessible in the well-known "Riverside Edition." 

For biographical details the student should use : — 

Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist, William Ellery Channing 

(Boston, 1873; reissued in 1902). 
Thoreau: His Life and Aims. A Study, A. H. Japp 

(London, 1878). 
Life of Henry David Thoreau, Henry S. Salt (London, 

1896, "Great Writers Series")- 
Henry D. Thoreau, Frank B. Sanborn (Boston, 1882). 

If Emerson's edition of Thoreau 's Letters to Various 
Persons is consulted, the stoical impression of Thoreau 
derived should be corrected by the reading of Familiar 
Letters of Henry D. Thoreau, Frank B. Sanborn (Boston, 
1894). 

As a guide to the great wealth of critical and miscella- 
neous material that has grown up about the name of 
Thoreau, Mr. Francis H. Allen's A Bibliography of Henry 
David Thoreau is invaluable (Boston, 1908). 



WALDEN 



WALDEN 



ECONOMY 

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk 
of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any- 
neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the 
shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, ° and 
earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived 5 
there two years° and two months. At present I am a 
sojourner in civilized life again. 

I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice 
of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been 
made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which 10 
some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to 
me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, 
very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got 
to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; 
and the hke. Others have been curious to learn what 15 
portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; 
and some, who have large famihes, how many poor chil- 
dren I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my 
readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me 
if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this 20 
book. In most books, the /, or first person, is omitted; 
in this it will be retained ; that, in respect to egotism, is 
the main difference. ° We commonly do not remember 

B 1 



2 ^ WALDEN 

that it is, after all, always the first person that is speak- 
ing. I should not talk so much about myself° if there 
were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, 
I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my ex- 
5 perience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, 
first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, 
and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; 
some such account as he would send to his kindred from 
a distant land ; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have 

lo been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are 
more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the 
rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply 
to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in put- 
ting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom 

15 it fits. 

I would fain say something, not so much concerning 
the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you° who read 
these pages, who are said to live in New England ; some- 
thing about your condition, especially your outward con- 

20 dition or circumstances in this world, in this town, what 
it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, 
whether it cannot be improved as well as not. I have 
travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in 
shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have ap- 

25 peared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remark- 
able ways. What I have heard of Bramins sitting exposed 
to four fires° and looking in the face of the sun ; or hang- 
ing suspended, with their heads downward, over flames; 
or looking at the heavens over their shoulders "until it 

30 becomes impossible for them to resume their natural posi- 
tion, while from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids 
can pass into the stomach ; " or dwelling, chained for life, 
at the foot of a tree ; or measuring with their bodies, like 



ECONOMY 3 

caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on 
one leg on the tops of pillars — even these forms of con- 
scious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing 
than the scenes which I daily witness. The twelve labors 
of Hercules° were trifling in comparison with those which 5 
my neighbors have undertaken ; for they were only twelve, 
and had an end; but I could never see that these men 
slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They 
have no friend Iolas° to burn with a hot iron the root of 
the hydra's head, but as soon as one head is crushed, tw^o 10 
spring up. 

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is 
to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming 
tools ; for these° are more easily acquired than got rid of. 
Better if they had been born in the open pasture and 15 
suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer 
eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made 
them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty 
acres, when a man is condemned to eat only his peck of 
dirt°? Why should they begin digging their graves as 20 
soon as they are born? They have got to live a man's 
life, pushing all these things before them ; and get on as 
well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have 
I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, 
creeping down the road of Hfe, pushing before it a barn 25 
seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean° stables never 
cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, ° mow- 
ing, pasture, and wood-lot ! The portionless, who struggle 
with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it 
labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of 3° 
flesh. 

But men labor under a mistake. The better part of 
the man is soon plougned into the soil for compost. By 



4 WALDEN 

a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are em- 
ployed, as it says in an old book,° laying up treasures 
which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through 
and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they 
5 get to the end of it, if not before. It is said that Deucalion 
and Pyrrha° created men by throwing stones over their 
heads behind them : — 

Inde genus° durum sumus, experiensque laborum, 
Et documenta damns qua simus origine nati. 

lo Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way, — 

" From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and 
care, 
Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are." 

So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, 

15 throwing the stones over their heads behind them, and 
not seeing where they fell. 

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, 
through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied 
with the factitious° cares and superfluously coarse la- 

20 bors of life, that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by 
them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy 
and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring 
man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day ; he 
cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; 

25 his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has 
no time to be anything but a machine. How can he 
remember well his ignorance — which his growth requires 
— who has so often to use his knowledge ? We should 
feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit 

30 him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The 
finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, 
can be preserved only by the most delicate handhng. 



ECONOMY 5 

Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus 
tenderly. 

Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to 
live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have 
no doubt that some of you who read this book are un- s 
able to pay for all the dinners which you have actually 
eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing 
or are already worn out, and have come to this page to 
spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors 
of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lo 
lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted 
by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into 
business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient 
slough, called by the Latins ces alienum, another's brass, 
for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, 15 
and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always 
promising to pay, promising to pay to-morrow, and 
dying to-day, insolvent ; seeking to curry favor, to get 
custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison 
offences ; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves 20 
into a nutshell of civility, or dilating into an atmosphere 
of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade 
your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or 
his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; 
making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something 25 
against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an 
old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, 
more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no 
matter how much or how little. 

I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, 1 30 
may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat 
foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, ° there 
are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both 



6 WALDEN 

north and south. It is hard to have a southern over- 
seer ; it is worse to have a northern one ; but worst of all 
when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a 
divinity in man ! Look at the teamster on the highway^ 

5 wending to market by day or night ; does any divinity 
stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water 
his horses ! What is his destiny to him compared with 
the shipping interests? Does not he drive for Squire 
Make-a-stir° ? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See 

lo how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he 
fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and 
prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his 
own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared 
with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of 

15 himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, 
his fate. Self-emancipation even in the West Indian 
provinces of the fancy and imagination — what Wilber- 
force° is there to bring that about? Think, also, of 
the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against 

20 the last day, not to betray too green° an interest in 
their fates ! As if you could kill time without injuring 
eternity. 

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What 
is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From 

25 the desperate city you go into the desperate country, 
and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks 
and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair 
is concealed even under what are called the games and 
amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for 

30 this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom 
not to do desperate things. 

When we consider what, to use the words of the cate- 
chism, is the chici end of man,° and what are the true 



ECONOMY 7 

necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had 
deliberately chosen the common mode of hving because 
they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think 
there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures 
remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late 5 
to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, 
however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What 
everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day 
may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of 
opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would 10 
sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people 
say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old 
deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people 
did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh 
fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry 15 
wood under a pot,° and are whirled round the globe with 
the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase 
is. Age is no better, ° hardly so well, qualified for an in- 
structor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has 
lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned 20 
anything of absolute value by living. Practically, the 
old have no very important advice to give the young, 
their own experience has been so partial, and their lives 
have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, 
as they must believe, and it may be that they have some 25 
faith left which belies that experience, and they are only 
less young than they were. I have lived some thirty 
years° on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first 
syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my sen- 
iors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot 3° 
tell me any thing, to the purpose. Here is life, an experi- 
ment to a great extent untried by me ; but it does not 
avail me that they ha\e tried it. If I have any experience 



8 WALDEN 

which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my 
Mentors° said nothing about. 

One farmer says to me, "You cannot hve on vegetable° 
food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with ;" 

5 and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying 
his system with the raw material of bones; walking all 
the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vege- 
table-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough 
along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really 

lo necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and 
diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in 
others still are entirely unknown. 

The whole ground of human life seems to some to have 
been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights 

15 and the valleys, and all things to have been cared for. 
According to Evelyn,° ''the wise Solomon prescribed 
ordinances for the very distances of trees ; and the Roman 
praetors° have decided how often you may go into your 
neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall on it with- 

20 out trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor." 
Hippocrates° has even left directions how we should cut 
our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, 
neither shorter nor longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium 
and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety 

25 and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man's capac- 
ities have never been measured; nor are we to judge 
of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been 
tried. Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, "be 
not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what 

30 thou hast left undone?" 

We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; 
as, for instance, that the same sun ^vhich ripens my beans 
illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had 



ECONOMY 9 

remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. 
This was not the hght in which I hoed them. The stars 
are the apexes of what wonderful triangles ! What dis- 
tant and different beings in the various mansions of the 
universe are contemplating the same one at the same mo- 5 
ment ! Nature and human life are as various as our several 
constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers 
to another ? Could a greater miracle take place than for 
us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? We 
should live in all the ages of the world in an hour ; ay, in 10 
all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology ! — 
I know of no reading of another's experience so startling 
and informing as this would be. 

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I 
believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, 15 
it is very hkely to be my good behavior. What demon 
possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say 
the wisest thing you can, old man — you who have lived 
seventy years, not without honor of a kind — I hear an 
irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. 20 
One generation abandons the enterprises of another 
like stranded vessels. 

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more 
than we do. We may waive just so much care of our- 
selves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well 25 
adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The inces- 
sant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable 
form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the impor- 
tance of what work we do ; and yet how much is not done 
by us ! or, what if we had been taken sick ? How vigilant 30 
we are ! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid 
it ; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly 
say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. 



10 WALDEN 

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, 
reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. 
This is the only way, we say; but there are as many 
ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All 
5 change is a miracle to contemplate ; but it is a miracle 
which is taking place every instant. Confucius° said, 
"To know that we know what we know, and that we do 
not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.'' 
When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to 

lo be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will 
at length establish their lives on that basis. 

Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble 
and anxiety which I have referred to is about, and how 
much it is necessary that we be troubled, or, at least, 

15 careful. It would be some advantage to live a primitive 
and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civil- 
ization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries 
of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them ; 
or even to look over the old da3^-books of the merchants, 

20 to see what it was that men most commonly bought at 
the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest 
groceries. ° For the improvements of ages have had but 
httle influence on the essential laws of man's existence; 
as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from 

25 those of our ancestors. 

By the w^ords, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of 
all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from 
the first, or from long use has become, so important to 
human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or 

30 poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it. 
To many creatures there is in this sense but one necessary 
of life. Food. To the bison of the prairie it is a few inches 
of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless he seeks 



ECONOMY 11 

the shelter of the forest or the mountain's shadow. None 
of the brute creation requires more than Food and Shelter. 
The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accu- 
rately enough, be distributed under the several heads of 
Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel ; for not till we have 5 
secured these are we prepared to entertain the true prob- 
lems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Man 
has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked 
food ; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the 
warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a 10 
luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. We 
observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. 
By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain 
our own internal heat ; but with an excess of these, or of 
Fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own 15 
internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin? 
Darwin, ° the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra 
del Fuego,° that while his own party, who were well 
clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, 
these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, 20 
to his great surprise, "to be streaming with perspiration 
at undergoing such a roasting.'' So, we are told, the 
New Hollander° goes naked with impunity, while the 
European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to com- 
bine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectual- 25 
ness of the civilized man? According to Liebig,° man's 
body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the 
internal combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we 
eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the result 
of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place 30 
when this is too rapid ; or, for want of fuel or from some 
defect in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course, the 
vital heat is not to be confounded with fire ; but so much 



12 WALDEN 

for analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above Hst, 
that the expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous 
with the expression, animal heat; for while Food may be 
regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the fire within us — 
5 and Fuel serves only to prepare that Food or to increase 
the warmth of our bodies by addition from without — 
Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the heat 
thus generated and absorbed. 

The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep 

lowarm, to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we 
accordingly take, not only with our Food, and Cloth- 
ing, and Shelter but with our beds, which are our night- 
clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare 
this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of 

15 grass and leaves at the end of its burrow ! The poor 
man is wont to complain that this is a cold world ; and to 
cold, no less physical than social, we refer directly a great 
part of our ails. The summer, in some climates, makes 
possible to man a sort of Elysian° life. Fuel, except to 

20 cook his Food, is then unnecessary ; the sun is his fire, 
and many of the fruits are suflSciently cooked by its rays ; 
while Food generally is more various, and more easily 
obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half 
unnecessary. At the present day, and in this country, 

25 as I find by my own experience, a few implements, 
a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheel-barrow, etc., and for 
the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few 
books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained 
at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other 

30 side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, 
and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in 
order that they may live — that is, kee]) comfortably 
warm — and die in New England at last. The luxuriously 



ECONOMY 13 

rich are not simply i<:ept comfortably warm, but unnatu- 
rally hot ; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course 
h la mode. 

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts 
of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hin-s 
drances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to 
luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever hved a more 
simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philoso- 
phers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class 
than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none lo 
so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is 
remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. 
The same is true of the more modern reformers and bene- 
factors of their race. None can be an impartial and wise 
observer of human life but from the vantage ground of 15 
what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of 
luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or com- 
merce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors 
of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable 
to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a 20 
philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor 
even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live 
according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, 
magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the prob- 
lems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The 25 
success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a 
courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make 
shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their 
fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler 
race of men. But why do men degenerate ever? What 3° 
makes families run out ? What is the nature of the luxury 
which enervates and destroys nations ? Are we sure that 
there is none of it in uur own hves ? The philosooher is i^ 



14 WALDEN 

advance of his age even in the outward form of his Hfe. 
He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his con- 
temporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not 
maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men ? 
5 When a man is warmed by the several modes which I 
have described, what does he want next? Surely not 
more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, 
larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant 
clothing, more numerous, incessant, and hotter fires, and 

lo the like. When he has obtained those things which are 
necessary to life, there is another alternative than to 
obtain the superfluities ; and that is, to adventure on life 
now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced. 
The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent 

15 its radicle° downward, and it msiy now send its shoot 
upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted 
himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise 
in the same proportion into the heavens above ? — for 
the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they bear at 

20 last in the air and light, far from the ground, and are 
not treated like the humbler esculents, ° which, though 
they may be biennials, ° are cultivated only till they 
have perfected their root, and often cut down at top for 
this purpose, so that most would not know them in their 

25 flowering season. 

I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant 
natures, who will mind their own affairs whether in heaven 
or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and spend 
more lavishly than the richest, without ever impoverishing 

30 themselves, not knowing how they live — if, indeed, there 
are any such, as has been dreamed ; nor to those who find 
their encouragement and inspiration in precisely the 
^esent_OjOndition of things, and cherish it with the 



ECONOMY 15 

fondness and enthusiasm of lovers — and, to some ex- 
tent, I reckon myself in this number ; I do not speak to 
those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, 
and they know whether they are well employed or not; 
but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, 5 
and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of 
the times, when they might improve them. There are 
some who complain most energetically and inconsolably 
of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. 
I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most 10 
terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated 
dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus 
have forged their own golden or silver fetters. 

If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend 15 
my life in past years, it would probably surprise those of 
my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual 
historv; it would certainly astonish those who know 
nothing about it. I will only hint at some of the enter- 
prises which I have cherished. 20 

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I 
have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch 
it on my stick° too ; to stand on the meeting of two 
eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the 
present moment ; to toe that line. You will pardon some 25 
obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in 
most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable 
from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know 
about it and never paint " No Admittance " on my gate. 

I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle- 30 
dove, and am still on their trail. ° Many are the travellers 
I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks 
and what calls they answered to, I have met one or two 



16 WALDEN 

who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, 
and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they 
seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them 
themselves. 

5 To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, 
but, if possible, Nature herself ! How many mornings, 
summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring 
about his business, have I been about mine ! No doubt, 
many of my townsmen have met me returning from this 

lo enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, or 

woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, I never 

assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, 

it was of the last importance only to be present at it. 

So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent out- 

15 side the town, trying to hear what was in the wind, 
to hear and carry it express ! I well-nigh sunk all my 
capital in it, and lost my own breath into the bargain, 
running in the face of it. If it had concerned either of the 
pohtical parties, depend upon it, it would have appeared in 

20 the Gazette with the earliest intelligence. At other times 
watching from the observatory of some cliff or tree, to 
telegraph any new arrival ; or waiting at evening on the 
hill-tops for the sky to fall, that I might catch something, 
though I never caught much, and that, manna-wise, ° 

25 would dissolve again in the sun. 

For a long time I was reporter to a journal, ° of no very 
wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to 
print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common 
with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, 

30 in this case my pains were their own reward. 

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of 
snow storms and rain storms, and did my duty faith- 
fully; surveyor, ° if not of highways, then of forest paths 



ECONOMY 17 

and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines 
bridged and passable at all seasons, where the pubUc heel 
had testified to their utility. 

I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which 
give a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping 5 
fences ; and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks 
and corners of the farm ; though I did not always know 
whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field to- 
day; that was none of my business. I have watered 
the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle tree, 10 
the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the 
yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry 
seasons. 

In short, I went on thus for a long time, I may say 
it without boasting, faithfully minding my business, 15 
till it became more and more evident that my towns- 
men would not after all admit me into the list of town 
officers, nor make my place a sinecure° with a moderate 
allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have kept 
faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still less 20 
accepted, still less paid and settled. However, I have not 
set my heart on that. 

Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets 
at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. 
"Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, 25 
we do not want any," was the reply. " What ! " exclaimed 
the Indian as he went out the gate, " do you mean to starve 
us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so 
well off — that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, 
and by some magic wealth and standing followed, he had 30 
said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave 
baskets ; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that 
when he had made tiie baskets he would have done his 



18 WALDEN 

part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. 
He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to 
make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least 
make him think that it was so, or to make something else 
5 which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven 
a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made 
it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, 
in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, 
and instead of studying how to make it worth men's 

lo while to buy my baskets I studied rather how to avoid 

the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise 

and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should 

we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others ? 

Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer 

15 me any room in the court-house, or any curacy or living 
anywhere else, but 1° must shift for myself, I turned 
my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where 
I was better known. I determined to go into business at 
once, and not wait to acquire the usual capital, using such 

20 slender means as I had already got. My purpose in going 
to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly 
there, but to transact some private business with the 
fewest obstacles ; to be hindered from accomplishing which 
for want of a little common sense, a little enterprise and 

25 business talent, appeared not so sad as foohsh. 

I have always endeavored to acquire strict business 
habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your 
trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small count- 
ing-house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fix- 

30 ture enough. You will export such articles as the country 
affords, purely native products, much ice and pine timber 
and a little granite, always in native bottoms. ° These 
will be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself 



ECONOMY 19 

in person ; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and 
underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the accounts; to 
read every letter received, and wTite or read every letter 
sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and 
day ; to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the 5 
same time — often the richest freight will be discharged 
upon a Jersey shore; to be your own telegraph, un- 
weariedly sw^eeping the horizon, speaking all passing 
vessels bound coastwise ; to keep up a steady despatch of 
commodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbi- 10 
tant market ; to keep yourself informed of the state of the 
markets, prospects of war and peace everywhere, and an- 
ticipate the tendencies of trade and civilization — taking 
advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using 
new passages and all improvements in navigation; charts 15 
to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights and 
buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarith- 
mic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some calcu- 
lator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have 
reached a friendly pier* — there is the untold fate of 20 
La Perouse°; universal science to be kept pace wdth, 
studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, 
great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno° and the 
Phoenicians down to our day ; in fine, account of stock to be 
taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It is a 25 
labor to task the faculties of a man — such problems of 
profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging*^ 
of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge. 

I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good 
place for business, not solely on account of the railroad or 30 
the ice trade; it offers advantages which it may not be 
good policy to divulge ; it is a good post and a good founda- 
tion. No Neva° marshes to be filled; though you must 



20 WALDEN 

everywhere build on piles of your own driving. It is said 
that a flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and ice in the Neva, 
would sweep St. Petersburg from the face of the earth. 
As this business was to be entered into without the 
5 usual capital, it may not be easy to conjecture where those 
means, that will still be indispensable to every such under- 
taking, were to be obtained. As for Clothing, ° to come 
at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we 
are led oftener by the love of novelty, and a regard for the 

lo opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. 
Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of 
clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, 
in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may 
judge how much of any necessary or important work 

15 may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. 
Kings and queens who wear a suit but once, though made 
by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot 
know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are 
no better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes 

20 on. Every day our garments become more assimilated 
to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer's char- 
acter, until we hesitate to lay them aside, without such 
delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity 
even as our bodies. No man ever stood the lower in my 

25 estimation for having a patch in his clothes ; yet I am 
sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have 
fashionable, or at least, clean and unpatched clothes, 
than to have a sound conscience. But even if the rent 
is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is im- 

30 providence. I sometimes try my acquaintances by such 
tests as this : who could wear a patch, or two extra 
seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they be- 
lieved that their prospects for life would be ruined if they 



ECONOMY 21 

should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble down 
to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. 
Often if an accident happens to a gentleman's legs, they 
can be mended ; but if a similar accident happens to the 
legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it ; for he con- 5 
siders, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. 
We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches. 
Dress a scare-crow in your last shift, you standing shift- 
less by, who would not soonest salute the scare-crow? 
Passing a cornfield the other day, close by a hat and coat 10 
on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. He was 
only a little more weather-beaten than when I saw him 
last. I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger 
who approached his master's premises with clothes on, 
but was easily quieted by a naked thief. . It is an inter- 15 
esting question how far men would retain their relative 
rank if they were divested of their clothes. Could you, 
in such a case, tell surely of any company of civilized 
men, which belonged to the most respected class ? When 
Madam Pfeiffer,° in her adventurous travels round the 20 
world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic 
Russia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing 
other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet 
the authorities, for she ''was now in a civilized coun- 
try, where . . . people are judged of by their clothes.'' 25 
Even in our democratic New England towns, the ac- 
cidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in 
dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost 
universal respect. But they who yield such respect, 
numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to 30 
have a missionary sent to them. Besides, clothes intro- 
duced sewing, a kind of work which you may call endless ; 
,a woman's dress, at least, is never done. 



22 WALDEN 

A man who has at length found something to do will 
not need to get a new suit to do it in ; for him the old will 
do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate 
period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have 
5 served his valet — if a hero ever has a valet — bare feet 
are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only 
they who go to soirees and legislative halls must have 
new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes 
in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and 

lo shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they 
not ? Who ever saw his old clothes — his old coat — 
actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, 
so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some 
poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer 

15 still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I 
say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, 
and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a 
new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If 
you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old 

20 clothes. All men want,° not something to do with, but 
something to do, or rather, something to he. Perhaps we 
should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty 
the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or 
sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, 

25 and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in 
old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, 
must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary 
ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, 
and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal indus- 

30 try and expansion ; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle 
and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing 
under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered ° at last 
by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind. 



ECONOMY 23 

We don garment after garment, as if we grew like 
exogenous plants by addition without. Our outside and 
often thin and fanciful clothes are our epidermis or false 
skin, which partakes not of our life, and may be stripped 
off here and there without fatal injury ; our thicker gar- 5 
ments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, or 
cortex° ; but our shirts are our liber or true bark, which 
cannot be removed without girdling and so destroying the 
man. I believe that all races at some seasons wear some- 
thing equivalent to. the shirt. It is desirable that a man 10 
be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself 
in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly 
and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, 
like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed 
without anxiety. While one thick garment is, for most 15 
purposes, as good as three thin ones, and cheap clothing 
can be obtained at prices really to suit customers ; while 
a thick coat can be bought for five dollars, which will 
last as many years, thick pantaloons for two dollars, 
cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a pair, a summer hat 20 
for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for sixty-two 
and a half cents, or a better be made at home at a nominal 
cost, where is he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of his 
oxen earning, there will not be found wise men to do him 
reverence ? 25 

When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my 
tailoress tehs me gravely, "They do not make them so 
now," not emphasizing the "They" at all, as if she quoted 
an authority as impersonal as the Fates, ° and I find it 
difficult to get made what I want, simply because she 30 
cannot believe that I mean what I say, that I am so rash. 
When I hear this oracular sentence, I am for a moment 
absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word 



24 WALDEN 

separately that I may come at the meaning of it, that I 
may find out by what degree of consanguinity They are 
related to me, and what authority they may have in an 
affair which affects me so nearly ; and, finally, I am in- 

5 clined to answer her with equal mystery, and without 
any more emphasis of the "they": "It is true, they did 
not make them so recently, but they do now." Of what 
use this measuring of me if she does not measure my 
character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it 

10 were a peg to hang the coat on? We worship not the 
Graces, ° nor the Parcse,° but Fashion. She spins and 
weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey 
at Paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys 
in America do the same. I sometimes despair of getting 

15 any thing quite simple and honest done in this world 
by the help of men. They would have to be passed 
through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions 
out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their 
legs again, and then there would be some one in the com- 

aopany with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg 
deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire 
kills these things, and you would have lost your labor. 
Nevertheless, we will not forget that some Egyptian 
wheat° was handed down to us by a mummy. 

25 On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained 
that dressing" has in this or an}^ country risen to the 
dignity of an art. At present, men make shift to wear 
what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on 
what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, 

30 whether of space or time, laugh at each other's masquerade. 
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows 
religiously the new. We are amused at beholding the 
costume of Henry VIII, or Queen Elizabeth, as much 



ECONOMY 25 

as if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal 
Islands. All costume of a man is pitiful or grotesque. 
It is only the serious eye peering from and the sincere 
life passed within it, which restrain laughter and conse- 
crate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be taken 5 
with a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve 
that mood too. When the soldier is hit by a cannon 
ball, rags are as becoming as purple. . 

The childish and savage taste of men and women for 
new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting 10 
through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the partic- 
ular figure which this generation requires to-day. The 
manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely 
whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few 
threads more or less of a particular color, the one will be 15 
sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently 
happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes 
the most fashionable. ° Comparatively, tattooing is not 
the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous 
merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable. 20 

I cannot believe that our factory systrm is the best 
mode by which men may get clothing. The condi- 
tion of the operatives is becoming every day more like 
that of the English ; and it cannot be wondered at, since, 
as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object 25 
is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, 
unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched. 
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. There- 
fore, though they should fail immediately, they had better 
aim at something high. 30 

As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a 
necessary of life, though there are instances of men hav- 



26 WALDEN 

ing done without it for long periods in colder countries 
than this. Samuel Laing° says that "The Laplander 
in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he puts over 
his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on 
5 the snow — in a degree of cold which would extinguish 
the life of one exposed to it in any woolen clothing/' 
He had seen them asleep thus. Yet he adds, " They 
are not hardier than other people.'' But, probably, man 
did not live long on the earth without discovering the 

lo convenience which there is in a house, the domestic" 
comforts, which phrase may have originally ignified 
the satisfactions of the house more than of the family; 
though these must be extremely partial and occasional 
in those climates where the house is associated in our 

15 thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two- 
thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary. 
In our climate, in the summer, it was formerly almost 
solely a covering at night. In the Indian gazettes" a 
wigwam was the symbol of a day's march, and a row of 

20 them cut or painted on the bark of a tree signified that 
so many times they had camped. Man was not made so 
large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow 
his world, and wall in a space such as fitted him. He w^as 
at first bare and out of doors ; but though this was pleasant 

25 enough in serene and warm w^eather, by daylight, the rainy 
season and the winter, to say nothing of the torrid sun, 
would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he had 
not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of a 
house. Adam and Eve, accordirg to the fable, wore the 

30 bower before other clothes. Man wanted a home, a place 
of warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the 
warmth of the affections. 

We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the 



ECONOMY 27 

human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow 
in a rock for shelter. Every child begins the world again, 
to some extent, and loves to stay out-doors, even in wet 
and cold. It plays house, as well as horse, having an 
instinct for it. Who does not remember the interest with s 
which, when young, he looked at shelving rocks, or any 
approach to a cave ? It was the natural yearning of that 
portion of our most primitive ancestor which still survived 
in us. From the cave we have advanced to roofs of 
palm leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen woven and lo 
stretched, of grass and straw, of boards and shingles, 
of stones and tiles. At last, we know not what it is to 
live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more 
senses than we think. From the hearth to the field is a 
great distance. It would be well, perhaps, if we were to 15 
spend more of our days and nights without any obstruc- 
tion between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not 
speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there 
so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish 
their innocence in dovecots. 20 

However, if one designs to construct a dwelling house, 
it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, 
lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth 
without a clew, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a 
splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight 25 
a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penob- 
scot Indians,^ in this town, living in tents of thin cotton 
cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, 
and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper 
to keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to get my 30 
living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pur- 
suits, was a question which vexed me even more than it 
does now, for unfortunately I am become somewh^tt 



28 WALDEN 

callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet 
long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their 
tools at night, and it suggested to me that every man 
who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, 

5 and having bored a few" auger holes in it, to admit the air 
at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook 
down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his 
soul be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any 
means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as 

lo late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad 
without any landlord or houselord dogging you for rent. 
Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger 
and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to 
death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting. 

15 Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with 
levity, -but it cannot so be disposed of. A comfortable 
house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of 
doors, was once made here almost entirely of such materials 
as Nature furnished ready to their hands. Gookin,° 

20 who was superintendent of the Indians subject to the 
Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, "The best 
of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, 
with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at those 
seasons when the sap is up, and made into great flakes, 

25 with pressure of weighty timber, when they are green. 
. . . The meaner sort are covered with mats which they 
make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight 
and warm, but not so good as the former. . . . Some 
I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet 

30 broad. ... I have often lodged in their wigwams, 
and found them as warm as the best English houses." 
He adds, that they were commonly carpeted and hned 
within with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were fur- 



ECONOMY 29 

nished with various utensils. The Indians had advanced 
so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat sus- 
pended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string. 
Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in a day 
or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours ; 5 
and every family owned one, or its° apartment in one. 

In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good 
as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants ; 
but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, 
though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes 10 
their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern 
civilized society not more than one half the families own 
a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where civiliza- 
tion especially prevails, the number of those who own a 
shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest 15 
pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become 
indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a 
village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them 
poor as long as they live. I do not mean to insist here on 
the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it 20 
is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it 
costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly 
because he cannot afford to own it ; nor can he, in the 
long run, any better afford to hire. But, answers one, by 
merely paying this tax the poor civilized man secures 25 
an abode which is a palace compared with the savage's. 
An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars, 
these are the country rates, entitles him to the benefit 
of the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, 
clean paint and paper, Rumford fireplace,° back plaster- 30 
ing, Venetian bhnds,° copper pump, spring lock, a commo- 
dious cellar, and many other things. But how happens it 
that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly 



30 W ALB EN 

a poor civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, 
is rich as a savage ? ■ If it is asserted that civilization is a 
real advance in the condition of man — and I think that 
it is, though only the wise improve their advantages — 

5 it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings 
without making them more costly; and the cost of a 
thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required 
to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. 
An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps 

lo eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take 
from ten to fifteen years of the laborer's life, even if he is 
not encumbered with a family — estimating the pecuniary 
value of every man's labor at one dollar a day, for if some 
receive more, others receive less — so that he must have 

15 spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam 
will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, 
this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage 
have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on 
these terms ? 

20 It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole ad- 
vantage of holding this superfluous property as a fund in 
store against the future, so far as the individual is concerned, 
mainly to the defraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps 
a man is not required to bury himself. Nevertheless 

25 this points to an important distinction between the civil- 
ized man and the savage; and, no doubt, they have 
designs on us for our benefit, in making the life of a civil- 
ized people an institution, in which the life of the individual 
is to a great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and 

30 perfect that of the race. But I wish to show at what a 
sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained, and to 
suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all the 
advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage. 



ECONOMY 31 

What mean ye° by saying that the poor ye have always 
with you, or that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, 
and the children's teeth are set on edge ? 

"As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occa- 
sion any more to use this proverb in Israel.'' 5 

"Behold all souls are mine ; as the soul of the father, 
so also the soul of the son is mine ; the soul that sinneth 
it shall die." 

When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, 
who are at least as well off as the other classes, I find that 10 
for the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, 
or forty years, that they may become the real owners of 
their farms, which commonly they have inherited with 
encumbrances, or else bought with hired money, — and 
M'e may regard one-third of that toil as the cost of their 15 
houses, — but commonly the}^ have not paid for them yet. 
It is true, the encumbrances somietimes outweigh the 
value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great 
encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being 
well acquainted with it, as he says. On applying to the 20 
assessors, I am surprised to learn that they cannot at once 
name a dozen in the town who own their farms free and 
clear. If you would know the history of these homesteads, 
inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. The 
man who has actually paid for his farm with labor on it is 25 
so rare that every neighbor can point to him. I doubt 
if there are three such men in Concord. What has been 
said of the merchants, that a very large majority, even 
ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true 
of the farmers. With regard to the merchants, how- 30 
ever, one of them says pertinently that a great part of 
their failures are not genuine pecuniary failures, but 
merely failures to fulfil their engagements, because it is 



32 WALDEN 

inconvenient ; that is, it is the moral character that breaks 
down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the 
matter, and suggests, beside, that probably not even the 
other three succeed in saving their souls, but are per- 
5 chance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail 
honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the spring- 
boards from which much of our civilization vaults and 
turns its somersets, but the savage stands on the unelastic 
plank of famine. Yet the Middesex Cattle Show goes 

lo off here with eclat° annually, as if all the joints of the 
agricultural machine were suent.° 

The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a 
livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem 
itself. To get his shoestrings he speculates in herds of 

15 cattle. With consummate skill he has set his trap with 
a hair springe° to catch comfort and independence, and 
then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it. This 
is the reason he is poor ; and for a similar reason we are 
all poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though 

20 surrounded by luxuries. As Chapman° sings, — 

"The false society of men — 
— for earthly greatness 
All heavenly comforts rarefies to air." 

And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be 
25 the richer but the poorer for it, and it be° the house that 
has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid objec- 
tion urged by Momus° against the house which Minerva° 
made, that she "had not made it movable, b)'" which 
means a bad neighborhood might be avoided;" and it 
30 may s.till be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy 
property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed 
in them ; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our 



ECONOMY 33 

own scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, 
in this town, who, for nearly a generation, have been 
wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and move into 
the village, but have not been able to accomplish it, and 
only death will set them free. 5 

Granted that the majority are able at last either to 
own or hire the modern house with all its improvements. 
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has 
not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. 
It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create lo 
noblemen and kings. And if the civilized man's pursuits 
are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greater 
part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts 
merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former ? 

But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will 15 
be found, that just in proportion as some have been placed 
in outward circumstances above the savage, others have 
been degraded below him. The luxury of one class is 
counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the 
one side is the palace, on the other are the almhouse and 20 
"silent poor." The myriads who built the pyramids to be 
the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it 
may be were not decently buried themselves. The mason 
who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night 
perchance to a hut not so good as a wigwam. It is a 25 
mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual 
evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very 
large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as 
that of savages. I refer to the degraded poor, not now 
to the degraded rich. To know this I should not need to 30 
look farther than the shanties which everywhere border 
our railroads, that last improvement^ in civilization; 
where I see in my daily walks human beings living in 



34 WALDEN 

sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of 
light, without any visible, often imaginable, wood pile, 
and the° forms of both old and young are permanently 
contracted by the long habit of shrinking from cold and 
5 misery, and the development of all their limbs and faculties 
is checked. It certainly is fair to look at that class by 
whose labor the works which distinguish this generation 
are accomplished. Such too, to a greater or less extent, 
is the condition of the operatives of every denomination 

lo in England, w^hich is the great workhouse of the world. 
Or I could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of 
the white or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast the 
physical condition of the Irish with that of the North 
American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other 

IS savage race before it was degraded by contact with the 
civilized man. Yet I have no doubt that that people's 
rulers are as wise as the average of civilized rulers. Their 
condition only proves what squalidness may consist with 
civilization. I hardly need refer now to the laborers in 

20 our Southern States who produce the staple exports of 
this country, and are themselves a staple production of 
the South. But to confine myself to those who are said 
to be in moderate circumstances. 

Most men appear never to have considered what a 

25 house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all 
their lives because they think that they must have such 
a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to wear any 
sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or, 
gradually leaving off palmleaf hat or cap of woodchuck 

30 skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford 
to buy him a crown ! It is possible to invent a house 
still more convenient and luxurious than we have, which 
yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for. 



ECONOMY 35 

Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and 
not sometimes to be content with less ? Shall the respect- 
able citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, 
the necessity of the young man's providing a certain 
number of superfluous glow-shoes, ° and umbrellas, and 5 
empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? 
Why should not our furniture be as simple as the Arab's 
or the Indian's? When I think of the benefactors of 
the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers 
from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not 10 
see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any car-load of 
fashionable furniture. Or what if I were to allow — would 
it not be a singular allowance ? — that our furniture 
should be more complex than the Arab's, in proportion 
as we are morally and intellectually his superiors ! At 15 
present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and 
a good housewife would sweep out the greater part into 
the dust hole, and not leave her morning's work undone. 
Morning work ! By the blushes of Aurora ° and the 
music of Memnon,° what should be man's morning 20 
icork in this world? I had three pieces of limestone 
on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required 
to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was 
all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in 
disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? 25 
I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on 
the grass, unless where man has broken ground. 

It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions 
which the herd so diligently follow. The traveller who 
stops at the best houses, so called, soon discovers this, 30 
for the publicans presume him to be a Sardanapalus,° 
and if he resigned himself to their tender mercies he would 
soon be completely emasculated. I think that in the 



36 WALDEN 

railroad car we are inclined to spend more on luxury than 
on safety and convenience, and it threatens without 
attaining these to become no better than a modern 
drawing-room, with its divans, and ottomans, and sun- 
5 shades, and a hundred other Oriental things, which we are 
taking west with us, invented for the ladies of the harem 
and the effeminate natives of the Celestial Empire, which 
Jonathan" should be ashamed to know the names of. 
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, 

lo than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather 
ride on earth in an ox cart with a free circulation, than 
go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and 
breathe a malaria all the way. 

The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in 

15 the primitive ages imply this advantage at least, that 
they left him still but a sojourner in nature. When he 
was refreshed with food and sleep he contemplated his 
journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this 
world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing the 

20 plains, or climbing the mountain tops. But lo ! men have 
become the tools of their tools. The man who indepen- 
dently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a 
farmer ; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a house- 
keeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have 

25 settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have 
adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of 
agfn-culture." We have built for this world a family 
mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best 
works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free 

30 himself from this condition, but the effect of our art 
is merely to make this low state comfortable and that 
higher state to be forgotten There is actually no place in 
this village for a work oifine art, if any had come down to us, 



ECONOMY 37 

to stand, for our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no 
proper pedestal for it. There is not a nail to hang a picture 
on, nor a shelf to receive the bust of a hero or a saint. 
When I consider how our houses are built and paid for, 
or not paid for, and their internal economy managed and 5 
sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give way under 
the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the 
mantel-piece, and let him through into the cellar, to some 
solid and honest though earthy foundation. I cannot 
but perceive that this so-called rich and refined life is a 10 
thing jumped at, and I do not get on in the enjoyment of 
the fine arts which adorn it, my attention being wholly 
occupied with the jump ; for I remember that the greatest 
genuine leap, due to human muscles alone, on record, is 
that of certain wandering Arabs, who are said to have 15 
cleared twenty-five feet on level ground. Without facti- 
tious° support, man is sure to come to earth again beyond 
that distance. The first question which I am tempted to 
put to the proprietor of such great impropriety is. Who 
bolsters you? Are you one of the ninety-seven who fail, 20 
or the three who succeed? Answer me these questions, 
and then perhaps I may look at your bawbles and find 
them ornamental. The cart before the horse is neither 
beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses 
with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our 25 
lives must be stripped, and housekeeping and beautiful 
living be laid for a foundation : now, a taste for the beauti- 
ful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no 
house and no housekeeper. 

Old Johnson, ° in his "Wonder-Working Providence," 30 
speaking of the first settlers of this town, with whom he 
was contemporary, tells us that ''they burrow themselves 
in the earth for their first shelter under some hillside, and, 



38 WALDEJV 

casting the soil aloft upon timber, they make a smoky 
fire against the earth, at the highest side." They did not 
"provide them houses," says he, "till the earth, by the 
Lord's blessing, brought forth bread to feed them," and 
5 the first year's crop was so light that "they were forced to 
cut their bread very thin for a long season." The secre- 
tary of the Province of New Netherland,° writing in Dutch, 
in 1650, for the information of those who wished to take up 
land there, states more particularly, that "those in New 

lo Netherland, and especially in New England, who have no 
means to build farm houses at first according to their wishes, 
dig a square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven 
feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper, case 
the earth inside with wood all round the wall, and line 

15 the wood with the bark of trees or something else to prevent 
the caving in of the earth; floor this cellar with plank, 
and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise a roof of spars 
clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods, so 
that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their 

20 entire famihes for two, three, and four years, it being under- 
stood that partitions are run through those cellars which 
are adapted to the size of the family. The wealthy 
and principal men in New England, in the beginning 
of the colonies, commenced their first dwelling houses 

25 in this fashion for two reasons; firstly, in order not 
to waste time in building, and not to want food the next 
season ; secondly, in order not to discourage poor laboring 
people whom they brought over in numbers from Father- 
land. In the course of three or four years, when the 

30 country became adapted to agriculture, they built them- 
selves handsome houses, spending on them several thou- 
sands." 

In this course which our ancestors took there was 



ECONOMY 39 

a show of prudence at least, as if their principle were 
to satisfy the more pressing wants first. But are the 
more pressing wants satisfied now? When I think of 
acquiring for myself one of our luxurious dwellings, I am 
deterred, for, so to speak, the country is not yet adapted s 
to human culture, and we are still forced to cut our 
spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their 
wheaten. Not that all architectural ornament is to be 
neglected even in the rudest periods ; but let our houses 
first be lined with beauty, where they come in contact lo 
with our lives, like the tenement of the shellfish, and not 
overlaid with it. But, alas ! I have been inside one or two 
of them, and know what they are hned with. 

Though we are not so degenerate but that we might 
possibly live in a cave or a wigwam or wear skins to-day, 15 
it certainly is better to accept the advantages, though so 
dearly bought, which the invention and industry of man- 
kind offer. In such a neighborhood as this, boards and 
shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily 
obtained than suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in 20 
sufficient quantities, or even well-tempered clay or fiat 
stones. I speak understandingly on this subject, for I 
have made myself acquainted with it both theoretically 
and practically. With a little more wit we might use 
these materials so as to become richer than the richest now 25 
are, and make our civilization a blessing. The civilized 
man is a more experienced and wiser savage. But to 
make haste to my own experiment. 

Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and 
went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to 30 
where I intended to build my house, and began to cut 
down some tall arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for 
timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but 



40 WALDEN 

perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit j^our 
fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The 
owner° of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that 
it was the apple of his eye ; but I returned it sharper than 
5 I received it. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, 
covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on 
the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines 
and hickories were springing up. The ice in the pond 
was not yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, 

lo and it was all dark colored and saturated with water. 
There were some slight flurries of snow during the days 
that I worked there ; but for the most part when I came 
out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand 
heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, 

15 and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard the lark 
and pewee and other birds already come to commence 
another j^ear with us. They were pleasant spring days, 
in which the winter of man's discontent^ was thawing 
as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid 

20 began to stretch itself. One day, w^hen my axe had come 
off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it 
with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond 
hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run 
into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently 

25 without inconvenience, as long as I stayed there, or more 
than a quarter of an hoiu-; perhaps because he had not 
fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me 
that for a like reason men remain in their present low and 
primitive condition ; but if they should feel the influence 

30 of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of neces- 
sity rise to a higher and more ethereal life. I had pre- 
viously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in my path 
with portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible; 



ECONOMY 41 

waiting for the sun to thaw them. On the 1st of April 
it rained and mehed the ice, and in the early part of the 
day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping 
about over the pond and cackhng as if lost, or hke the 
spirit of the fog. 5 

So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, 
and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not 
having many communicable or scholar-like thoughts, 
singing to myself, — 

Men say they know many things, ^o 

But lo! they have taken wings — 

The arts and sciences. 

And a thousand appliances; 

The wind that blows 

Is all that any body knows. i"? 

I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of 
the studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor 
timbers on one side, leaving the rest of the bark on, 
so that they were just as straight and much stronger than 
sawed ones. Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned° 20 
by its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by this time. 
My days in the w^oods were not very long ones; yet I 
usually carried my dinner of bread and butter, and read 
the newspaper in which it was wrapped, at noon, sitting 
amid the green pine boughs which I had cut off, and to my 25 
bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my hands 
were covered with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had 
done I was more the friend than the foe of the pine tree, 
though I had cut' down some of them, having become 
better acquainted wuth it. Sometimes a rambler in the 30 
wood was attracted by the sound of my axe, and we 
chatted pleasantly over the chips which I had made. 
By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, 



42 WALDEN 

but rather made the most of it, my house was framed 
and ready for the raising. I had already bought the 
shanty of James ColUns, an Irishman who worked on the 
Fitchburg Railroad, for boards. James Collins' shanty 
5 was considered an uncommonly fine one. When I called 
to see it he was not at home. I walked about the outside, 
at first unobserved from within, the window was so deep and 
high. It was of small dimensions, with a peaked cottage 
roof, and not much else to be seen, the dirt being raised 

lo five feet all around as if it were a compost heap. The roof 
was the soundest part, though a good deal warped and 
made brittle by the sun. Doorsill there was none, but 
a perennial passage for the hens under the door board. 
Mrs. C. came to the door and asked me to view it from the 

15 inside. The hens were driven in by my approach. It 
was dark, and had a dirt floor for the most part, dank, 
clammy, and aguish, only here a board and there a board 
which would not bear removal. She lighted a lamp to 
show me the inside of the roof and the walls, and also 

20 that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me 
not to step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet 
deep. In her own words, they were ''good boards over- 
head, good boards all around, and a good window," — of 
two whole squares originally, only the cat had passed out 

25 that way lately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to 
sit, an infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, 
gilt-framed looking-glass, and a patent new coffee-mill 
nailed to an oak sapling, all told. The bargain was soon 
concluded, for James had in the meanwhile returned. I 

30 to pay four dollars and twent3'-five cents to-night, he to 
vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to nobody else 
meanwhile : I to take possession at six. It were well, he 
said, to be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct 



ECONOMY 43 

but wholly unjust claims on the score of ground rent and 
fuel. This he assured me was the only encumbrance. At 
six I passed him and his family on the road. One large 
bundle held their all, — bed, coffee-mill, looking-glass, 
hens, — all but the cat, she took to the woods and became 5 
a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward, trod in a trap set 
for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last. 

I took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing 
the nails, and removed it to the pond side by small cart- 
loads, spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach and 10 
warp back again in the sun.^ One early thrush gave me a 
note or two as I drove along the woodland path. I was 
informed treacherously by a young Patrick that neighbor 
Seeley, an Irishman, in the intervals of the carting, trans- 
ferred the still tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, 15 
staples, and spikes to his pocket, and then stood when I 
came back to pass the time of day, and look freshly up, 
unconcerned, with spring thoughts, at the devastation; 
there being a dearth of work, as he said. He was there to 
represent spectatordom, and help make this seemingly in- 20 
significant event one with the removal of the gods of Troy. 

I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, 
where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down 
through sumach and blackberry roots, and the lowest 
stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a 25 
fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in any winter. 
The sides were left shelving, and not stoned ; but the sun 
having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its 
place. It was but two hours' work. I took particular 
pleasure in this breaking of ground, for in almost all 30 
latitudes men dig into the earth for an equable temperature. 
Under the most splendid house in the city is still to be 
found the cellar where they store their roots as of old, and 



44 WALDEN 

long after the superstructure has disappeared posterity- 
remark its dent in the earth. The house is still but a sort 
of porch at the entrance of a burrow. 

At length, in the beginning of May, with the help 

5 of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so 
good an occasion for neighborhness than from any necessity, 
I set up the frame of my house. No man was ever more 
honored in the character of his raisers° than I. They 
are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier 

lo structures one day. I began to occupy my house on the 
4th of July,° as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the 
boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it 
was perfectly impervious to rain; but before boarding, I 
laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing 

15 two cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my 
arms. I built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, 
before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cook- 
ing in the meanwhile out of doors on the ground, early in 
the morning ; which mode I still think is in some respects 

20 more convenient and agreeable than the usual one. When 
it stormed before my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards 
over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and 
passed some pleasant hours in that way. In those days, 
when my hands were much employed, I read but little, 

::5 but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my 
holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, 
in fact, answered the same purpose as the Iliad. 

It would be worth the while to build still more deliber- 
ately than I did, considering, for instance, what founda- 
30 tion a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature 
of man, and perchance never raising any superstructure 
until we have found a better reason for it than our tern- 



ECONOMY 45 

poral necessities even. There is some of the same fitness 
in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's 
building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed 
their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food 
for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, 5 
the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as 
birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But 
alas ! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, w^hich lay their 
eggs in nests w^iich other birds have built, and cheer no 
traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. 10 
Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the 
carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the 
experience of the mass of men ? I never in all my walks 
came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an 
occupation as building his house. We belong to the 15 
community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth 
part° of a man ; it is as much the preacher, and the mer- 
chant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor 
to end ? and what object does it finally serve ? No doubt 
another may also think for me ; but it is not therefore 20 
desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my 
thinking for myself. 

True, there are architects so called in this country, 
and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea 
of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, 25 
a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation 
to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, 
but only a little better than the common dilettantism. 
A sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at the 
cornice, not at the foundation. It was only how to put a 30 
core of truth within the ornaments, that every sugar 
plum in fact might have an almond or caraway seed in it, — 
though I hold that almonds are most wholesome without 



46 WALDEN 

the sugar, — and not how the inhabitant, the indweller, 
might build truly within and without, and let the orna- 
ments take care of themselves. What reasonable man 
ever supposed that ornaments were something outward 
5 and in the skin merely, — that the tortoise got his spotted 
shell, or the shellfish its mother-o '-pearl tints, by such 
a contract as the inhabitants of Broadway their Trinity 
Church°? But a man has no more to do with the style 
of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that 

lo of its shell : nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to 
paint the precise color of his virtue on his standard. The 
enemy will find it out. He may turn pale when the 
trial comes. This man seemed to me to lean over the 
cornice, and timidly whisper his half truth to the rude 

15 occupants, who really knew it better than he. What of 
architectural beauty I now see, I know has gradually 
grown from within outward, out of the necessities and 
character of the indweller, who is the only builder, — out 
of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness, with- 

20 out ever a thought for the appearance ; and whatever 
additional beauty of this kind is destined to be produced 
will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life.° 
The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the 
painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log 

25 huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life 
of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any 
peculiarity in their surfaces merely, which makes them 
picturesque ; and equally interesting will be the citizen's 
suburban box, when his life shall be as simple and as 

30 agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little strain- 
ing after effect in the style of his dwelling. A great 
proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, 
and a September gale would strip them off, like borrowed 



ECONOMY 47 

plumes, without injury to the substantials. They can 
do without architecture who have no ohves nor wines in 
the cellar. What if an equal ado were made about the 
ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of our 
bibles spent as much time about their cornices as the s 
architects of our churches do? So are made the belles- 
lettres and the beaux-arts and their professors. Much it 
concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks are slanted 
over him or under him, and what colors are daubed upon 
his box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest lo 
sense, he slanted them and daubed it ; but the spirit having 
departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with construct- 
ing his own coffin — the architecture of the grave, and 
"carpenter" is but another name for "coffin-maker." 
One man says, in his despair or indifference to hfe, take is 
up a handful of the earth at your feet, and paint your 
house that color. Is he thinking of his last and narrow 
house ? Toss up a copper for it as well. What an abun- 
dance of leisure he must have ! Why do you take up a 
handful of dirt ? Better paint your house your own com- 20 
plexion ; let it turn pale or blush for you. An enterprise 
to improve the style of cottage architecture ! When you 
have got my ornaments ready I will wear them. 

Before winter, I built a chimney, and shingled the 
sides of my house, which were already impervious to rain, 25 
with imperfect and sappy shingles made of the first slice 
of the log, whose edges I was obliged to straighten with 
a plane. 

I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten 
feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a 3° 
garret and a closet, a large window on each side, two trap 
doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite. 
The exact cost of my house, paying the usual price for 



48 WALDEN 

such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all 
of which was done by myself, was as follows ; and I give 
the details because very few are able to tell exactly what 
their houses cost, and fewer still, if any, the separate 
S cost of the various materials which compose them : — 

Boards $8 03^, mostly shanty boards. 

Refuse shingles for roof and sides . 4 00 

Laths 125 

Two second-hand windows with glass 2 43 

ID One thousand old brick .... 4 00 

Two casks of lime 2 40 That was high. 

Hair 31 More than I needed. 

Mantle-tree iron . . ' . . . . 015 

Nails 3 90 

IS Hinges and screws 014 

Latch 010 

Chalk 01 

... ^ At\\ ^ carried a good part 

Transportation 1 40 1 on my back. 

In all $28 12^ 

2o These are all the materials excepting the timber, stones, 
and sand, which I claimed by squatter's right. I have 
also a small wood-shed adjoining, made chiefly of the 
stuff which was left after building the house. 

I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on 

25 the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon 
as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than 
my present one. 

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter 
can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater 

30 than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem 
to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag 
for humanity rather than for myself; and my short- 
comings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my 
statement. Notwithstanding much cant ^nd hypocrisy, 



ECONOMY 49 

— chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my 
wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man, — I will 
breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such 
a relief to both the moral and physical system ; and I am 
resolved that I will not through humility become the 5 
devil's attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word 
for the truth. At Cambridge College° the mere rent of 
a student's room, which is only a little larger than my own, 
is thirty dollars each year, though the corporation had the 
advantage of building thirty-two side by side and under 10 
one roof, and the occupant suffers the inconvenience 
of many and noisy neighbors, ° and perhaps a residence 
in the fourth story. I cannot but think that if we had 
more true wisdom in these respects, not only less educa- 
tion would be needed, because, forsooth, more would 15 
already have been acquired, but the pecuniary expense 
of getting an education would in a great measure vanish. 
Those conveniences which the student requires at Cam- 
bridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times 
as great a sacrifice of life as they would with proper 20 
management on both sides. Those things for which the 
most money is demanded are never the things which the 
student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an impor- 
tant item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable 
education which he gets by associating with the most 25 
cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made. The 
mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a sub- 
scription of dollars and cents, and then following blindly 
the principles of a division of labor to its extreme, a prin- 
ciple which should never be followed but with circum- 30 
spection, — to call in a contractor who makes this a sub- 
ject of speculation, and he employs Irishmen or other 
operatives actually to lay the foundations, while the stu- 



50 WALDEN 

dents that are to be are said to be fitting themselves for it ; 
and for these oversights successive generations have to pay. 
I think that it would be better than this, for the students, or 
those who desire to be benefited by it, even to lay the 
5 foundation themselves. The student who secures his 
coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking 
any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and 
unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of* the experience 
which alone can make leisure fruitful. ''But," says one, 

io"you do not mean that the students should go to work 
with their hands instead of their heads?" I do not 
mean that exactly, but I mean something which he might 
think a good deal like that ; I mean that they should not 
play life, or study it merely, while the community supports 

IS them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from 
beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live 
than by at once trying the experiment of Uving ? Methinks 

■ this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics. 
If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and 

20 sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common 
course, which is merely to send him into the neighbor- 
hood of some professor, where anything is professed and 
practised but the art of life ; — to survey the world 
through a telescope, or a microscope, and never with his 

25 natural eye ; to study chemistry, and not learn how his 
bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is 
earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not 
"detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a 
satellite himself ; or to be devoured by the monsters that 

30 swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters 
in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the 
most at the end of a month, — the boy who had made 
his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and 



ECONOMY 51 

smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this 
— or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy 
at the Institute° in the meanwhile, and had received a 
Rogers' penknife from his father ? Which would be most 
likely to cut his fingers? o . . To my astonishment I 5 
was informed on leaving college that I had studied naviga- 
tion ! — why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor 
I should have known more about it. Even the poor 
student studies and is taught only 'political economy, while 
that economy of living w^hich is synonymous with philos- 10 
ophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The 
consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith,° Ri- 
cardo,° and Say,° he runs his father in debt irretrievably. 
As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern im- 
provements " ; there is an illusion about them ; there is 15 
not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exact- 
ing compound interest to the last for his early share and 
numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inven- 
tions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our atten- 
tion from serious things. They are but improved means 20 
to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but 
too easy to arrive at ; as railroads lead to Boston or New 
York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic 
telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, 
it may be, have nothing important to communicate. 25 
Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest 
to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but 
when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet 
was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the 
main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. 30 
We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the 
old world some weeks nearer to the new ; but perchance 
the first news that will leak through into the broad, 



52 WALDEN 

flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide® 
has the whooping cough. After all, the man whose horse 
trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most impor- 
tant messages ; he is not an evangelist, nor does he come 
5 round eating locusts and wdld honey. I doubt if Flying 
Childers° ever carried a peck of corn to mill. 

One says to me, "I wonder that you do not lay up 
money ; you love to travel ; you might take the cars and 
go to Fitchburg to-day and see the country." But I am 

lo wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller 
is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we 
try who will get there first. The distance is thirty 
miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day's 
wages. I remember when wages were sixty cents a day 

15 for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, 
and get there before night ; I have travelled at that rate 
by the week together. You will in the meanwhile have 
earned your fare, and arrive there some time to-morrow, 
or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get 

20 a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will 
be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if 
the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should 
keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country and 
getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your 

25 acquaintance altogether. 

Such is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, 
and with regard to the railroad even we may say it is as 
broad as it is long. To make a railroad round the world 
available to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole 

30 surface of the planet. Men have an indistinct notion that 
if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long 
enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no 
time, and for nothing ; but though a crowd rushes to the 



ECONOMY 53 

depot, and the conductor shouts "All aboard !" when the 
smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be 
perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over, 
— and it will be called, and will be, "A melancholy acci- 
dent." No doubt they can ride at last who shall have 5 
earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long, but they 
will probably have lost their elasticity and desire to travel 
by that time. This spending of the best part of one's life 
earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty 
during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the Eng- 10 
lishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in 
order that he might return to England and live the life 
of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once. 
''What!'' exclaim a million Irishmen starting up from 
all the shanties in the land, ''is not this railroad which we 15 
have built a good thing ? " Yes, I answer, comparatively 
good, that is, you might have done worse ; but I wish, as 
you are brothers of mine,° that you could have spent your 
time better than digging in this dirt. 

Before I had finished my house, wishing to earn ten 20 
or twelve dollars by some honest and agreeable method, 
in order to meet my unusual expenses, I planted about 
two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it chiefly 
with beans, but also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas, 
and turnips. The whole lot contains eleven acres, mostly 25 . 
growing up in pines and hickories, and was sold the pre- 
ceding season for eight dollars and eight cents an acre. 
One farmer said that it was "good for nothing but to raise 
cheeping squirrels on." I put no manure whatever on this 
land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter and not 30 
expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite 
hoe it all once. I got out several cords of stumps in 



54 WALDEN 

ploughing, which supphed me with fuel for a long time, 
and left small circles of virgin mould, easily distinguishable 
through the summer by the greater luxuriance of the beans 
there. The dead and for the most part unmerchantable 
5 wood behind my house, and the driftwood from the 
pond, have supplied the remainder of my fuel. I was 
obliged to hire a team and a man for the ploughing, though 
I held the plough myself. My farm outgoes for the first sea- 
son were, for implements, seed, work, etc., $14.72|-. The 
lo seed corn was given me. This never costs anything to 
speak of, unless 3'ou plant more than enough. I got twelve 
bushels of beans, and eighteen bushels of potatoes, besides 
some peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn and turnips 
were too late to come to anything. My whole income from 
IS the farm was 

$23 44 
Deducting the outgoes .... 14 12\ 
There are left $8 ll\ 

beside produce consumed and on hand at the time this 
estimate was made of the value of $4.50, — the amount on 

2o hand much more than balancing a little grass which I did 
not raise. All things considered, that is, considering the 
importance of a man's soul and of to-day, notwithstanding 
the short time occupied by my experiment, nay, partly 
even because of its transient character, I believe that that 

25 was doing better than any farmer in Concord did that year. 

The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all 

the land which I required, about a third of an acre, 

and I learned from the experience of both years, not being 

in the least awed by many celebrated works on husbandry, 

30 Arthur Young° among the rest, that if one would live sim- 
ply and eat only the crop which he raised, and raise no 



ECONOMY 55 

more than he ate, and not exchange it for an insufficient 
quantity of more luxurious and expensive things, he would 
need to cultivate only a few rods of ground, and that it 
would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen to 
plough it, and to select a fresh spot from time to time than 5 
to manure the old, and he could do all his necessary 
farm work as it were with his left hand at odd hours in the 
summer ; and thus he would not be tied to an ox, or horse, 
or cow, or pig, as at present. I desire to speak impartially 
on this point, and as one not interested in the success or 10 
failure of the present economical and social arrangements. 
I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, 
for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow 
the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every 
moment. Beside being better off than they already, 15 
if my house had been burned or my crops had failed I 
should have been nearly as well off as before. 

I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers 
of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so 
much the freer. Men and oxen exchange work ; but if we 20 
consider necessary work only, the oxen will be seen to have 
greatly the advantage, their farm is so much the larger. 
Man does some of his part of the exchange work in his six 
weeks of haying, and it is no boy^s play. Certainly no 
nation that lived simply in all respects, that is, no nation 25 
of philosophers, would commit so great a blunder as to use 
the labor of animals. True, there never was and is not 
likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain 
it is desirable there should be. However, / should never 
have broken a horse or bull and taken him to board for 30 
any work he might do for me, for fear I should become a 
horse-man or a herds-man merely ; and if society seems to 
be the gainer by so doing, are we certain that what is one 



56 WALDEN 

man's gain is not another's loss, and that the stable-boy 
has equal cause with his master to be satisfied ? Granted 
that some public works would not have been constructed 
without this aid, and let man share the glory of such with 
5 the ox and horse ; does it follow that he could not have 
accomplished works yet more worthy of himself in that 
case ? When men begin to do, not merely unnecessary or 
artistic, but luxurious and idle work, with their assistance, 
it is inevitable that a few do all the exchange work with the 

lo oxen, or, in other words, become the slaves of the strongest. 
Man thus not only works for the animal within him, but, 
for a symbol of this, he works for the animal without him. 
Though we have many substantial houses of brick or stone, 
the prosperity of the farmer is still measured by the degree 

15 to which the barn overshadows the house. This town is 
said to have the largest houses for oxen, cows, and horses 
hereabouts, and it is not behindhand in its public buildings ; 
but there are very few halls for free worship or free speech 
in this county. It should not be by their architecture, 

20 but why not even by their power of abstract thought, that 
nations should seek to. commemorate themselves ? How 
much more admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta° than all the 
ruins of the East ! Towers and temples are the luxury 
of princes. A simple and independent mind does not toil 

::5 at the bidding of any prince. Genius is not a retainer 
to any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or 
marble, except to a trifling extent. To what end, pray, 
is so much stone hammered. In Arcadia, ° when I was 
there, I did not see any hammering stone. Nations are 

30 possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the 
memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone 
they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and 
polish their manners ? One piece of good sense would be 



ECONOMY 57 

more memorable than a monument as high as the moon. 
I love better to see stones in place. The grandeur of 
Thebes was a vulgar grandeur. More sensible is a rod of 
stone wall that bounds an honest man's field than a hun- 
dred-gated Thebes that has wandered farther from the true 5 
end of life. The religion and civilization which are barbaric 
and heathenish build splendid temples ; but what you might 
call Christianity does not. Most of the stone a nation 
hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. 
As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them 10 
so much as the fact that so many men could be found de- 
graded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb 
for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser 
and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given 
his body to the dogs. I might possibly invent some excuse 1 5 
for them and him, but I have no time for it. As for the 
religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same 
all the world over, whether the building be an Egyptian 
temple or the United States Bank. It costs more than it 
comes to. The mainspring is vanity, assisted by the love 20 
of garlic and bread and butter. Mr. Balcom, a promising 
young architect, designs it on the back of his Vitruvius,° 
with hard pencil and ruler, and the job is let out to Dobson 
& Sons, stone-cutters. When the thirty centuries begin 
to look down on it, mankind begins to look up at it. As for 25 
your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow 
once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, 
and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese 
pots and kettles rattle ; but I think that I shall not go out 
of my way to admire the hole which he made. Many are 30 
concerned about the monuments of the West and the East, 
— to know" who built them. For my part, I should like 
to know who in those days did not build them, — who 



58 



WALDEN 



were above such trifling. But to proceed with my statis- 
tics. 

By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various other 
kinds in the village in the meanwhile, for I have as many 

5 trades as fingers, I had earned $13.34. The expense of 
food for eight months, namely, from July 4th to March 1st, 
the time when these estimates were made, though I lived 
there more than two years, — not counting potatoes, a 
little green corn, and some peas, which I had raised, nor 

fo considering the value of what was on hand at the last date, 
was 



Rice 



Molasses . 


1 73 


Rye meal . 


1 041 


15 Indian meal . 


. 991 


Pork . . . 


. 22 


Flour . . . 


. 88- 


Sugar . 


. 80 


Lard . . . 


. 65 


20 Apples . . . 


. 25 


Dried apple . 


. 22 


Sweet potatoes 


. 10 


One pumpkin 


. 06 


One watermeloi 


1 02 


25 Salt .... 


. 03 



SI 73i 



Cheapest form of the saccharine. 

Cheaper than rye. 

Costs more than Indian meal, 
both money and trouble. 



> 



Yes, I did eat $8.74, all told ; but I should not thus 
unblushingly publish my guilt, if I did not know that most 
of my readers were equally guilty with myself, and that 
their deeds would look no better in print. The next year 

30 I sometimes caught a mess of fish for my dinner, and once 
I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged 
my beanfield, — effect his transmigration, as a Tartar 
would say, — and devour him, partly for experiment's 
sake ; but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, 

35 notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the longest 



ECONOMY 59 

use would not make that a good practice, however it 
might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by 
the village butcher. 

Clothing and some incidental expenses within the same 
dates, though little can be inferred from this item, S 
amounted to 

S8 40f 
Oil and some household utensils ... 2 00 

So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing 
and mending, which for the most part were done out of the lo 
house, and their bills have not yet been received, — and 
these are all and more than all the ways by which money 
necessarily goes out in this part of the world, — were 

House $28 121 

Farm, one year 14 12\ ^5 

Food, eight months 8 74 

Clothing, &c., eight months .... 8 40f 
Oil, &c., eight months 2 00 

In all $61 99| 

I address myself now to those of my readers who have a liv- 20 
ing to get. And to meet this I have for farm produce sold 

$23 44 
Earned by day labor 13 34 

In all $36 78 

which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves 25 
a balance of $25.21j on the one side, — this being very 
nearly the means with which I started, and the measure 
of expenses to be incurred, — and on the other, beside the 
leisure and independence and health thus secured, a com- 
fortable house for me as long as I choose to occupy it. ,0 
These statistics, however accidental and therefore 



60 WALDEN 

uninstructive they may appear, as they have a certain 
completeness, have a certain vahie also. Nothing was 
given me of which I have not rendered some account. 
It appears from the above estimate that my food alone 

5 cost me in money about twenty-seven cents a week. It 
was, for nearly two years after this, rye and Indian meal 
without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, 
molasses, and salt, and my drink, water. It was fit that I 
should live on rice, mainly, who loved so well the philosophy 

lo of India. ° To meet the objections of some inveterate 
cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out occasion- 
ally, as I always had done, and I trust shall have oppor- 
tunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of 
my domestic arrangements. But the dining out, being, 

15 as I have stated, a constant element, does not in the least 
affect a comparative statement like this. 

I learned from my two years' experience that it would 
cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary 
food, even in this latitude ; that a man may use as simple 

20 a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. 
I have made a satisfactory dinner, satisfactory on several 
accounts, simply off a dish of purslane {Portulaca oleracea) 
which I gathered in my cornfield, boiled and salted. I give 
the Latin on account of the savoriness of the trivial name. 

25 And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peace- 
ful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of 
ears of green sweet-corn boiled, with the addition of salt ? 
Even the little variety which I used was a yielding to the 
demands of appetite, and not of health. Yet men have 

30 come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for 
want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries ; and I know 
a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life be- 
cause he took to drinking water only. 



ECONOMY 61 

The reader will perceive that I am treating the subject 
rather from an economic than a dietetic point of view, and 
he will not venture to put my abstemiousness to the test 
unless he has a well-stocked larder. 

Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt, 5 
genuine hoe-cakes, which I baked before my fire out of 
doors on a shingle or the end of a stick of timber sawed off 
in building my house ; but it was wont to get smoked and 
to have a piny flavor. I tried flour also ; but have at last 
found a mixture of rye and Indian meal most convenient 10 
and agreeable. In cold weather it was no little amusement 
to bake several small loaves of this in succession, tending 
and turning them as carefully as an Egyptian his hatching 
eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which I ripened, and 
they had to my senses a fragrance like that of other noble 15 
fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by wrapping them 
in cloths. I made a study of the ancient and indispensable 
art of breadmaking, consulting such authorities as offered, 
going back to the primitive days and first invention of the 
unleavened kind, when from the wildness of nuts and 20 
meats men first reached the mildness and refinement of 
this diet, and travelling gradually down in my studies 
through that accidental souring of the dough which, it is 
supposed, taught the leavening process, and through the 
various fermentations thereafter, till I came to "good, 25 
sweet, wholesome bread," the staff of life. lieaven, which 
some deem the soul of bread, the spiritus which fills its 
cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved like the vestal 
fire, — some precious bottle-full, I suppose, first brought 
over in the Mayflower, did the business for America, 30 
and its influence is still rising, swelling, spreading, in 
cerealian° billows over the land, — this seed I regularly 
and faithfully procured from the village, till at length one 



62 WALDEN 

morning I forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast; by 
which accident I discovered that even this was not indis- 
pensable, — for my discoveries were not by the synthetic 
but analytic process, — and I have gladly omitted it since, 
5 though most housewives earnestly assured me that safe and 
wholesome bread without yeast might not be, and elderly 
people prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces. Yet 
I find it not to be an essential ingredient, and after going 
without it for a year am still in the land of the living ; and 

lo I am glad to escape the trivialness of carrying a bottle-full 
in my pocket, which would sometimes pop and discharge 
its contents to my discomfiture. It is simpler and more 
respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who more than 
any other can adapt himself to all climates and circum^ 

15 stances. Neither did I put any sal soda, or other acid or 
alkali, into my bread. It would seem that I made it ac- 
cording to the recipe which Marcus Porcius Cato gave about 
two centuries before Christ. " Panem depsticium sic facito. 
Manus mortariumque bene lavato. Farinam in mortarium 

20 indito, aquae paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubi 
bene subegeris, defingito, coquitoque sub testu.^' Which I 
take to mean — " Make kneaded bread thus. Wash your 
hands and trough well. Put the meal into the trough, add 
water gradual^, and knead it thoroughly. When you 

25 have kneaded it well, mould it, and bake it under a cover," 
that is, in a baking-kettle. Not a word about leaven. 
But I did not always use this staff of life. At one time, 
owing to the emptiness of my purse, I saw none of it for 
more than a month. 

30 Every New Englander might easily raise all his own 
breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not 
depend on distant and fluctuating markets for them. 
Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, 



ECONOMY 63 

in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, 
and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly 
used by any. For the most part the farmer gives to his 
cattle and hogs the grain of his own producing, and buys 
flour, which is at least no more wholesome, at a greater 5 
cost, at the store. I saw that I could easily raise my bushel 
or two of rye and Indian corn, for the former will grow 
on the poorest land, and the latter does not require the best, 
and grind them in a hand-mill, and so do without rice and 
pork ; and if I must have some concentrated sweet, 1 10 
found by experiment that I could make a very good mo- 
lasses either of pumpkins or beets, and I knew that I needed 
only to set out a few maples to obtain it more easily still, 
and while these were growing I could use various substitutes 
beside those which I have named. "For,'' as the fore- 15 
fathers sang, — 

"we can make liquor to sweeten our lips, 
Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips," ° 

Finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, ° to obtain 
this might be a fit occasion for a visit to the seashore, 20 
or, if I did without it altogether, I should probably drink 
the less water. I do not learn that the Indians ever troubled 
themselves to go after it. 

Thus I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my 
food was concerned, and having a shelter already, it 25 
would only remain to get clothing and fuel. The panta- 
loons which I now wear were woven in a farmer's family, — 
thank Heaven there is so much virtue still in man ; for I 
think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and 
memorable as that from the man to the farmer ; — and in 30 
a new country fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, 
if I were not permitted still to squat, I might purchase one 



64 WALDEN 

acre at the same price for which the land I cultivated was 
sold — namely, eight dollars and eight cents. But as 
it was, I considered that I enhanced the value of the land 
by squatting on it. 
5 There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes 
ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on 
vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root of the 
matter at once, — for the root is faith, — I am accustomed 
to answer such, that I can live on board nails. If they 

lo cannot understand that, they cannot understand much 
that I have to say. For my part, I am glad to hear of 
experiments of this kind being tried ; as that a young man 
tried for a fortnight to live on hard, raw corn on the ear, 
using his teeth for all mortar. ° The squirrel tribe tried 

15 the same and succeeded. The human race is interested 
in these experiments, though a few old women who are 
incapacitated for them, or who own their thirds in mills, 
may be alarmed. 

My furniture, part of which I made myself, and the 
20 rest cost me nothing of which I have not rendered an 
account, consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, 
a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and 
andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, 
a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, 
25 one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned 
lamp. None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. 
That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty of such chairs as 
I like best in the village garrets to be had for taking them 
away. Furniture ! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand 
30 without the aid of a furniture warehouse. What man 
but a philosopher would not be ashamed to see his furni- 
ture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the 



ECONOMY 65 

light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of 
empty boxes? That is Spaulding's° furniture. I could 
never tell from inspecting such a load whether it belonged 
to a so-called rich man or a poor one ; the owner always 
seemed poverty-stricken. Indeed, the more you have of 
such things the poorer you are. Each load looks as if it 5 
contained the contents of a dozen shanties ; and if one shanty 
is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what do 
we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuvice; ° at 
last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and 
leave this to be burned ? It is the same as if all these traps 10 
were buckled to a man's belt, and he could not move over 
the rough country where our lines are cast without 
dragging them, — dragging his trap. He was a lucky 
fox° that left his tail in the trap. The muskrat will gnaw 
his third leg off to be free. No wonder man has lost his 15 
elasticity. How often he is at a dead set. ''Sir, if I 
may be so bold, what do you mean by a dead set ? " If 
you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see 
all that he owns, ay, and much that he pretends to dis- 
own, behind him, even to his kitchen furniture and all the 20 
trumpery which he saves and will not burn, and he will 
appear to be harnessed to it and making what headway 
he can. I think that the man is at a dead set who has 
got through a knot hole or gateway where his sledge load of 
furniture cannot follow him. I cannot but feel compassion 25 
when I hear some trig,° compact-looking man, seemingly 
free, all girded and ready, speak of his ''furniture," as 
whether it is insured or not. "But what shall I do with 
my furniture?" My gay butterfly is entangled in a 
spider's web then. Even those who seem for a long while 3° 
not to have any, if you inquire more narrowly you will 
find have some stored in somebody's barn. I look upon 



66 WALDEN 

England to-day as an old gentleman who is travelling with 
a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated 
from long housekeeping, which he has not the courage to 
burn; great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle. 
Throw away the first three at least. It would surpass the 
5 powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and 
walk, and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down 
his bed and run. When I have met an immigrant tottering 
under a bundle which contained his all — looking like an 
enormous wen which had grown out of the nape of his 

lo neck — I have pitied him, not because that was his all, but 
because he had all that to carry. If I have got to drag my 
trap, I will take care that it be a light one and do not nip 
me in a vital part. But perchance it would be wisest never 
to put one's paw into it. 

15 I would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing 
for curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun 
and moon, and I am willing that they should look in. The 
moon will not sour milk nor taint meat of mine, nor will 
the sun injure my furniture or fade my carpet, and if he is 

20 sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still better economy 
to retreat behind some curtain which nature has provided, 
than to add a single item to the details of housekeeping. A 
lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare 
within the house, nor time to spare within or without to 

25 shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod 
before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil. 
Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon's 
effects, for his life had not been ineffectual ; ^ 

"The evil° that men do lives after them." 

30 As usual, a great proportion was trumpery, which had 
begun to accumulate in his father's day. Among the 



ECONOMY 67 

rest was a dried tapeworm. And now, after Ij^ing half 
a century in his garret and other dust holes, these things 
were not burned ; instead of a bonfire, or purifying destruc- 
tion of them, there was an auction, or increasing of them. 
The neighbors eagerly collected to view them, bought them 5 
all, and carefully transported them to their garrets and dust 
holes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when they 
will start again. When a man dies he kicks the dust. 

The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, 
be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through 10 
the semblance of casting their slough annually ; they have 
the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not. 
Would it not be well if we were to celebrate such a *' busk," 
or "feast of first fruits," as Bartram° describes to have been 
the custom of the Mucclasse Indians? "When a town 15 
celebrates the busk," says he, "having previously provided 
themselves with new clothes, new pots, new pans, and 
other household utensils and furniture, they collect all 
their worn-out clothes and other despicable things, sweep 
and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town, of 20 
their filth, which with all the remaining grain and other 
old provisions they cast together into one common heap, 
and consume it with fire. After having taken medicine, 
and fasted for three days, all the fire in the town is ex- 
tinguished. During this fast they abstain from the gratifi- 25 
cation of every appetite and passion whatever. A general 
amnesty is proclaimed; all malefactors may return to 
their town." — 

"On the fourth morning the high priest, by rubbing 
dry wood together, produces new fire in the pubhc square, 3^ 
from whence every habitation in the town is supplied with 
the new and pure flame." 

Then they feast on the new corn and fruits and dance 



68 WALDEN 

and sing for three days, "and the four following days 
they receive visits and rejoice with their friends from neigh- 
boring towns who have in like manner purified and pre- 
pared themselves." 

5 The Mexicans" also practised a similar purification at 
the end of every fifty-two years, in the behef that it was 
time for the world to come to an end. 

I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is as 
the dictionary defines it, "outward and visible sign of an 

lo inward and spiritual grace,'' than this, and I have no 
doubt that they were originally inspired directly from 
Heaven to do thus, though they have no bibhcal record of 
the revelation. ° 

For more than five years I maintained myself thus 

15 solely by the labor of my hands, and I found, that by 
working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all 
the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as well 
as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. 
I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my 

20 expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, 
to my income, for I was obliged to dress and train, not to 
say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into 
the bargain. As I did not teach for the good of my fellow- 
men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I 

25 have tried trade ; but I found that it would take ten years 
to get under way in that, and that then I should probably 
be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraid that I 
might by that time be doing what is called a good business. 
When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do 

30 for a living, some sad experience in conforming to the 
wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenu- 
ity, I thought often and seriously of picking huckle- 



ECONOMY 69 

berries; that surely I could do, and its small profits 
might suffice, — for my greatest skill has been to want but 
little, — so little capital it required, so little distraction 
from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my 
acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the pro- 5 
fessions, I contemplated this occupation as most like theirs ; 
ranging the hills all summer to pick the berries which came 
in my way, and thereafter carelessly dispose of them ; 
so, to keep the flocks of Admetus.° I also dreamed that 
I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to such 10 
villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even to 
the cit)% by hay-cart loads. But I have since learned 
that trade curses everything it handles; and though 
you trade in messages from Heaven, the whole curse of 
trade attaches to the business. 15 

As I preferred some things to others, and especially 
valued my freedom, as I could fare hard and yet succeed 
well, I did not wish to spend my time in earning rich car- 
pets or other fine furniture, or delicate cookery, or a house 
in the Grecian or the Gothic style just yet. If there are 20 
any to whom it is no interruption to acquire these things, 
and who know how to use them when acquired, I relin- 
quish to them the pursuit. Some are ''industrious," and 
appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because 
it keeps them out of worse mischief ; to such I have at 25 
present nothing to say. Those who would not know what 
to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might ad- 
vise to work twice as hard as they do, — work till they 
pay for themselves, and get their free papers. For my- 
self I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the 30 
most independent of any, especially as it required only 
thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer's 
day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then 



70 WALDEN 

free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent 
of his labor ; but his employer, who speculates from month 
to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the 
other. 
5 In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, 
that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship 
but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely ; as the 
pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the 
more artificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn 

lo his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier 
than I do. 

One young man of my acquaintance, who has inherited 
some acres, told me that he thought he should live as I did, 
if he had the means. I would not have any one adopt my 

15 mode of living° on any account ; for, beside that before he 
has fairly learned it I may have found out another for 
myself, I desire that there may be as many different per- 
sons in the world as possible ; but I would have each one 
be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, 

20 and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's 
instead. The youth may build or plant or sail, only let 
him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he 
would like to do. It is by a mathematical point only that 
we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps 

25 the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for 
all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a cal- 
culable period, but we would preserve the true course. 

Undoubtedly, in this case, what is true for one is truer 
still for a thousand, as the large house is not proportion- 

30 ally more expensive than a small one, since one roof 
may cover, one cellar underlie, and one wall separate 
several apartments. But for my part, I preferred the 
solitary dwelling. Moreover, it will commonly be cheaper 



ECONOMY 71 

to build the whole yourself than to convince another of 
the advantage of the common wall ; and when you have 
done this, the common partition, to be much cheaper, 
must be a thin one, and that other may prove a bad neigh- 
bor, and also not keep his side in repair. The only co- s 
operation which is commonly possible is exceedingly 
partial and superficial ; and what little true co-operation 
there is, is as if it were not, being a harmony inaudible 
to men. If a man has faith he will co-operate with equal 
faith everywhere ; if he has not faith, he will continue lo 
to live like the rest of the world, whatever company he 
is joined to. To co-operate, in the highest as well as the 
lowest sense, means to get our living together. I heard 
it proposed lately that two young men should travel to- 
gether over the world, the one without money, earning his 15 
means as he went, before the mast and behind the plough, 
the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket. It was 
easy to see that they could not long be companions or 
co-operate, since one would not operate at all. They 
would part at the first interesting crisis in their adven- 20 
tures. Above all, as I have implied, the man who goes 
alone can start to-day ; but he who travels with another 
must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long 
time before they get off. 

But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my 25 
townsmen say. I confess that I have hitherto indulged 
very httle in philanthropic enterprises. I have made 
some sacrifices to a sense of duty, and among others have 
sacrificed this pleasure also. There are those who have 
used all their arts to persuade me to undertake the support 30 
of some poor family in the town ; and if I had nothing to 
do, — for the devil finds employment for the idle, — I 



72 WALDEN 

might try my hand at some such pastime as that. How- 
ever, when I have thought to indulge myself in this respect, 
and lay their Heaven under an obligation by maintaining 
certain poor persons in all respects as comfortably as I 

5 maintain myself, and have even ventured so far as to 
make them the offer, they have one and all unhesitatingly 
preferred to remain poor. While my townsmen and 
women are devoted in so many ways to the good of their 
fellows, I trust that one at least may be spared to other 

lo and less humane pursuits. You must have a genius for 
charity as well as for any thing else. As for Doing-good, 
that is one of the professions which are full. Moreover, 
I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am 
satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. 

15 Probably I should not, consciously and deliberately, for- 
sake my particular calling to do the good which society 
demands of me, to save the universe from annihilation; 
and I believe that a like but infinitely greater stead- 
fastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. But I 

20 would not stand between any man and his genius; and 

to him who does this work, which I decline, with his whole 

heart and soul and life, I would say. Persevere, even if 

the world call it doing evil, as it is most likely they will. 

I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar 

25 one; no doubt many. of my readers would make a similar 
defence. At doing something, — I will not engage that 
my neighbors shall pronounce it good, — I do not hesitate 
to say that I should be a capital fellow to hire ; but what 
that is, it is for my employer to find out. What good 

30 I do, in the common sense of that word, must be aside from 
my main path, and for the most part wholly unintended. 
Men say, practically. Begin where you are and such as 
you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, 



ECONOMY 73 

and with kindness aforethought go about doing good. 
If I were to preach at all in this strain, I should say 
rather, Set about being good. As if the sun should 
stop when he had kindled his fires up to the splendor of 
a moon, or a star of the sixth magnitude, and go about 5 
like a Robin Goodfellow,° peeping in at every cottage 
window, inspiring lunatics, and tainting meats, and mak- 
ing darkness visible, instead of steadily increasing his 
genial heat and beneficence till he is of such brightness 
that no mortal can look him in the face, and then, and in 10 
the meanwhile too, going about the world in his own 
orbit, doing it good, or rather, as a truer philosophy has 
discovered, the world going about him getting good. 
When Phaeton, ° wishing to prove his heavenly birth by his 
beneficence, had the sun's chariot but one day, and drove 15 
out of the beaten track, he burned several blocks of 
houses in the lower streets of heaven, and scorched the 
surface of the earth, and dried up every spring, and made 
the great desert of Sahara, till at length Jupiter hurled 
him headlong to the earth with a thunderbolt, and the 20 
sun, through grief at his death, did not shine for a year. 

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from good- 
ness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I 
knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house 
with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run 25 
for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the 
African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth 
and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffo- 
cated, for fear that I should get some of his good to me, 
— some of its virus mingled with my blood. No, — in 30 
this case I would rather suffer evil the natural way. A 
man is not a good man to me because he will feed me if I 
should be starving, or warm me if I should be freezing, or 



74 WALDEN 

pull me out of a ditch if I should ever fall into one. I can 
find you a Newfoundland dog that will do as much. 
Philanthropy is not love for one's fellow-man in the 
broadest sense. Howard° was no doubt an exceedingly 
5 kind and worthy man in his way, and has his reward ; 
but, comparatively speaking, what are a hundred Howards 
to us, if their philanthropy do not help us in our best estate, 
when we are most worthy to be helped ? I never heard of 
a philanthropic meeting in which it was sincerely proposed 

lo to do any good to me, or the hke of me. 

The Jesuits° were quite balked by those Indians who, 
being burned at the stake, suggested new modes of torture 
to their tormentors. Being superior to physical suffering, 
it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any con- 

15 solation which the missionaries could offer; and the law 
to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness 
on the ears of those, who, for their part, did not care how 
they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new 
fashion, and came very near freely forgiving them all 

20 they did. 

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need^ 
though it be your example which leaves them far behind. 
If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do 
not merely abandon it to them. We make curious 

25 mistakes sometimes. Often the poor man is not so cold 
and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is 
partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you 
give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it. 
I was wont to pity the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice 

30 on the pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while I 
shivered in my more tidy and somewhat more fashionable 
garments, till, one bitter cold day, one who had slipped 
into the water came to my house to warm him, and I 



ECONOMY 75 

saw him strip off three pairs of pants and two pairs of 
stockings ere he got down to the skin, though they were 
dirty and ragged enough, it is true, and that he could 
afford to refuse the extra garments which I offered him, he 
had so many intra ones. This ducking was the very 5 
thing he needed. Then I began to pity myself, and I saw 
that it would be a greater charity to bestow on me a flannel 
shirt than a whole slop-shop ° on him. There are a thou- 
sand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking 
at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest 10 
amount of time and money on the needy is doing the 
most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he 
strives in vain to relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder 
devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sun- 
day's hberty for the rest. Some show their kindness to 15 
the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would 
they not be kinder if they employed themselves there? 
You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in 
charity ; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and 
done with it. Society recovers only a tenth part of the 20 
property then. Is this owing to the generosity of him in 
whose possession it is found, or to the remissness of the 
officers of justice? 

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is suffi- 
ciently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly 25 
overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it. 
A robust poor man, one sunny day here in Concord, 
praised a fellow-townsman to me, because, as he said, he 
was kind to the poor; meaning himself. The kind 
uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its 30 
true spiritual fathers and mothers. I once heard a rever- 
end lecturer on England, a man of learning and intelli- 
gence, after enumerating her scientific, literary, and polit- 



76 • WALDEN 

ical worthies, Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, 
Newton, ° and others, speak next of her Christian heroes, 
whom, as if his profession required it of him, he elevated to 
a place far above all the rest, as the greatest of the great. 

5 They were Penn,° Howard, ° and Mrs. Fry.° Every one 
must feel the falsehood and cant of this. The last were 
not England's best men and women; only, perhaps, her 
best philanthropists. 

I would not subtract any thing from the praise that is 

lo due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all 
who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. 
I do not value chiefly a man's uprightness and benevolence, 
which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. Those plants 
of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick, 

IS serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks. 
I want the flower and fruit of a man ; that some fra- 
grance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness 
flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial 
and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs 

20 him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a 
charity that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist 
too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of 
his own cast-off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sym- 
pathy. We should impart our courage, and not our de- 

25 spair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take 
care that this does not spread by contagion. From what 
southern plains comes up the voice of wailing? Under 
what latitudes reside the heathen to whom we would 
send light ? Who is that intemperate and brutal man 

30 whom we would redeem ? If anything ail a man, so that 
he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his 
bowels even, — for that is the seat of sympathy, — he 
forthwith sets about reforming — the world. Being a mi- 



ECONOMY 77 

crocosm himself, he discovers, and it is a true discovery, 
and he is the man to make it, — that the world has been 
eating green apples ; to his eyes, in fact, the globe itself 
is a great green apple, which there is danger awful to think 
of that the children of men will nibble before it is ripe ; s 
and straightway his drastic philanthropy seeks out the 
p]squimaux and the Patagonian, and embraces the popu- 
lous Indian and Chinese villages; and thus, by a few 
years of philanthropic activity, the powers in the mean- 
while using him for their own ends, no doubt, he cures lo 
himself of his dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint blush 
on one or both of its cheeks, as if it were beginning to be 
ripe, and hfe loses its crudity and is once more sweet and 
wholesome to live. I never dreamed of any enormity 
greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never 15 
shall know, a worse man than myself. 

I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his 
sympathy with his fellows in distress, but though he be 
the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be 
righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over 20 
his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions 
without apology. (My excuse for not lecturing against 
the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it ; that is a 
penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay;) 
though there are things enough I have chewed, which I 25 
could lecture against. If you should ever be betrayed into 
any of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand 
know what your right hand does, for it is not worth know- 
ing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoe-strings. 
Take your time, and set about some free labor. 30 

\ Our manners have been corrupted by communication 
■'ith the saints. Our hymn-books resound with a melo- 

">us cursing of God and enduring him forever. One 



78 WALDEN 

would say that even the prophets and redeemers had rather 
consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of man. 
There is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible 
satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of 
5 God. All health and success does me good, however 
far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and 
failure helps to make me sad and does me evil, however 
much sympathy it may have with me or I with it. If, 
then, we would indeed restore mankind by truly Indian, 

to botanic, magnetic, or natural means, let us first be as 
simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds 
which hang over our own brows, and take up a little life 
into our pores. Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor, 
but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world. 

15 I read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik 
Sadi° of Shiraz, that "They asked a wise man, saying: 
Of the many celebrated trees which the Most High God 
has created lofty and umbrageous, they call none azad, 
or free, excepting the cypress, which bears no fruit : what 

20 mystery is there in this ? - He replied : Each has its appro- 
priate produce, and appointed season, during the con- 
tinuance of which it is fresh and blooming, and during 
their absence dry and withered ; to neither of which 
states is the cypress exposed, being always flourishing; 

25 and of this nature are the azads, or religious independents. 
— Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory ; for the 
Dijlah.° or Tigris, will continue to flow through Bagdad 
after the race of caliphs is extinct : if thy hand has plenty, 
be liberal as the date tree ; but if it affords nothing to give 

30 away, be an azad, or free man, like the cypress." 



COMPLEMENTAL VERSES^ 



THE PRETENSIONS OF POVERTY 

' Thou dost presume too much, poor, needy wretch, 
To claim a station in the firmament, 
Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub, 
Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue 

In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs, 5 

With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right ° hand 
Tearing those humane passions from the mind. 
Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish 
Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense. 
And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone. lo 

We not require the dull society 
Of your necessitated temperance, 
Or that unnatural stupidity 
That knows nor joy nor sorrow ; nor your forc'd 
Falsely exalted passive fortitude ^5 

Above the active. This low abject brood. 
That fix their seats in mediocrity. 
Become your servile minds ; but we advance 
Such virtues only as admit excess. 

Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence, 20 

All-seeing prudence, magnanimity 
That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue 
For which antiquity hath left no name, 
But patterns only, such as Hercules, 

Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath'd cell; 25 

And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere, 
Study to know but what those worthies were." 

T. Carew.° 



79 



WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED 
FOR 

At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to con- 
sider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have 
thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen 
miles of where I Uve. In imagination I have bought all 

5 the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and I 
knew their price. I walked over each farmer's premises, 
tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with 
him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging 
it to him in my mind ; even put a higher price on it, — 

lo took everything but a deed of it, — took his word for his 
deed, for I dearl}^ love to talk, — cultivated it, and him too 
to some extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed 
it long enough, leaving him to carry it on. This experience 
entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate broker 

15 by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and 
the landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is 
a house but a sedes, a seat ? — better if a country seat. 
I discovered many a site for a house not likely to be soon 
improved, which some might have thought too far from 

20 the village, but to my eyes the village was too far from it. 
Well, there I might live, I said ; and there I did live, for 
an hour, a summer and a winter life ; saw how I could let 
the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the 
spring come in. The future inhabitants of this region, 

25 wherever they may place their houses, may be sure that 

80 



WHERE I LIVED 81 

they have been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to 
lay out the land into orchard, woodlot, and pasture, and 
to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand 
before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be 
seen to the best advantage ; and then I let it lie, fallow 5 
perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number 
of things which he can afford to let alone. 

My imagination carried me so far that I even had the 
refusal of several farms, — the refusal was all I wanted, 
— but I never got my fingers burned by actual posses- 10 
sion. The nearest that I came to actual possession was 
when I bought the HollowelP place, and had begun to 
sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make 
a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with° ; but before the 
owner gave me a deed of it, his wife — every man has such 15 
a wife — changed her mind and wished to keep it, and 
he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now (to speak 
the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it sur- 
passed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had 
ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all to- 20 
gether. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the 
farm too, for I had carried it far enough ; or rather, to be 
generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, 
and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten 
dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials 25 
for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a 
rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I 
retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried 
off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect 
to landscapes, — 3° 

" I am monarch® of all I survey ° 
My right there is none to dispute." 



82 WALDEN 

I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed 
the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer 
supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, 
the owner does not know it for many years when a poet 
5 has put his farm in rh^^me, the most admirable kind 
of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, 
skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer 
only the skimmed milk. 

The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, 

lowere: its complete retirement, being about two miles 
from the village, half a mile from the nearest neigh- 
bor, and separated from the highway by a broad field ; 
its bounding on the river, which the owner said pro- 
tected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though 

15 that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous 
state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, 
which put such an interval between me and the last 
occupant; the hollow and hchen-covered apple trees, 
gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I 

20 should have ; but above all, the recollection I had of it 
from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house 
was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through 
which I heard the house-dog bark. I was in haste to 
buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some 

25 rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing 
up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, 
or, in short, had made any more of his improvements. 
To enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry it on ; like 
Atlas, ° to take the world on my shoulders, — I never heard 

30 what compensation he received for that, — and do all 
those things which had no other motive or excuse but that 
I might pay for it and be unmolested in my possession 
of it ; for I knew all the while that it would yield the 



WHERE I LIVED 83 

most abundant crop of the kind I wanted if I could only 
afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I have said. 

All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a 
large scale, (I have always cultivated a garden,) was, that 
I had had my seeds ready. Many think that seeds im-5 
prove with age. I have no doubt that time discriminates 
between the good and the bad : and when at last I shall 
plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed. But I 
would say to my fellows, once for all. As long as possible 
live free and uncommitted. ° It makes but little differ- 10 
ence whether you are committed to a farm or the county 
jail. 

Old Cato,° whose "DeRe Rustica " is my " Cultivator, "° 
says, and the only translation I have seen makes sheer 
nonsense of the passage, "When you think of getting a 15 
farm, turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily ; nor 
spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough 
to go around it once. The oftener you go there the more 
it will please you, if it is good." I think I shall not buy 
greedily, but go round and round it as long as I live, 20 
and be buried in it first, that it may please me the more 
at last. 

The present was my next experiment of this kind, 
which I purpose to describe more at length ; for conven- 
ience putting the experience of two years into one. As I 25 
have said, I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, ° 
but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, stand- 
ing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. 

When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, 
began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, 30 
by accident, was on Independence day, or the fourth of 
July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but 
was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering 



84 WALDEN 

or chimney, the walls being of rough weather-stained 
boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. 
The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door 
and window -casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially 
5 in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, 
so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would 
exude from them. To my imagination it retained 
throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, 
reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had 

lo visited the year before. This was an airy and unplastered 
cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess 
might trail her garments. The winds which passed over 
my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of moun- 
tains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, 

15 of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, 
the poem of creation is uninterrupted ; but few are the 
ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the 
earth everywhere. 

The only house I had been the owner of before, if I 

20 except a boat, was a tent, which I used occasionally when 
making excursions in the summer, and this is still rolled 
up in my garret ; but the boat,° after passing from hand 
to hand, has gone down the stream of time. With this 
more substantial shelter about me, I had made some 

25 progress towards settling in the world. This frame, so 
slightly clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and 
reacted on the builder. It was suggestive somewhat as 
a picture in outlines. I did not need to go out doors to 
take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its 

30 freshness. It was not so much within doors as behind 
a door where I sat, even in the rainiest weather. The 
Harivansa° says, "An abode without birds is like a meat 
without seasoning." Such was not my abode, for I found 



WHERE I LIVED 85 

myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having 
imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. 
I was not only nearer to some of those which commonly 
frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those wilder 
and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, 5 
or rarely, serenade a villager, — the woodthrush, the 
veery, the scarlet tanager, the field-sparrow, the whip- 
poorwill, and many others. 

I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile 
and a half south of the village of Concord and somewhat 10 
higher than it, in the midst of an extensive wood between 
that town and Lincoln, and about two miles south of that 
our only field known to fame, Concord Battle Ground; 
but I was so low^ in the woods that the opposite shore, 
half a mile off, like the rest, covered with wood, was my 15 
most distant horizon. For the first w^eek, whenever I 
looked out on the pond it impressed me like a tarn high 
up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far above the 
surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it throw- 
ing off its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, 20 
by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface 
was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily 
withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the 
breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. The very 
dew seemed to hang upon the trees later into the day 25 
than usual, as on the sides of mountains. 

This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the 
intervals of a gentle rain storm in August, when, both air 
and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid- 
afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the wood- 3° 
thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. 
A lake like this is never smoother than at such a time; 
and the clear portion o£»the air above it being shallow and 



86 WALDEN 

darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, 
becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more impor- 
tant. From a hill top near by, where the wood had been 
recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward 
5 across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills 
which form the shore there, where their opposite sides 
sloping toward each other suggested a stream flowing 
out in that direction through a wooded valley, but stream 
there was none. That way I looked between and over the 

lo near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the 
horizon, tinged with blue. Indeed, by standing on tiptoe 
I could catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still 
bluer and more distant mountain ranges in the northwest, 
those true-blue coins from heaven's own mint, and also 

IS of some portion of the village. But in other directions, 
even from this point, I could not see over or beyond the 
woods which surrounded me. It is well to have some 
water in your neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and 
float the earth. One value even of the smallest well is, 

20 that when you look into it you see that earth is not con- 
tinent but insular. This is as important as that it keeps 
butter cool. When I looked across the pond from this 
peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood 
I distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their 

25 seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all the earth be- 
yond the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated and 
floated even by this small sheet of intervening water, and 
I was reminded that this on which I dwelt was but dry 
land. 

30 Though the view from my door was still more contracted, 
I did not feel crowded or confined in the least. There 
was pasture enough for my imagination. The low shrub- 
oak plateau to which the opposite shore arose, stretched 



WHERE I LIVED 87 

away toward the prairies of the West and the steppes of 
Tartary, affording ample room for all the roving famihes 
of men. "There are none happy in the world but beings 
who enjoy freely a vast horizon/' said Damodara, when 
his herds required new and larger pastures. 5 

Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer 
to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history 
which had most attracted me. Where I lived was as far 
off as many a region viewed nightly by astronomers. We 
are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some lo 
remote and more celestial corner of the system, behind the 
constellation of Cassiopeia's Chair, far from noise and dis- 
turbance. I discovered that my house actually had its 
site in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, 
part of the universe. If it were worth the while to settle 15 
in those parts near to the Pleiades or the H3^ades, to 
Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal 
remoteness from the life which I had left behind, dwindled 
and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, 
and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. Such 20 
was that part of creation where I had squatted ; — 

" There was a shepherd that did live, 
And held his thoughts as high 
As were the mounts whereon his flocks 
Did hourly feed him by ; " 25 

What should we think of the shepherd's hfe if his flocks 
always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts ? 

Every morning° was a cheerful invitation to make 
my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, 
with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper 30 
of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the 
pond ; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best 



88 WALDEN 

things which I did. They say that characters were en- 
graven on the bathing tub of king Tching-thang to this 
effect : ''Renew thyself completely each day; do it again 
and again, and forever again." I can understand that. 
5 Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected 
by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible 
and unimaginable tour through my apartments at 
earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows 
open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. 

lo It was Homer's requiem ; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in 
the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was 
something cosmical about it ; a standing advertisement, 
till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the 
world. The morning, which is the most memorable 

15 season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there 
is least somnolence in us ; and for an hour, at least, some 
part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day 
and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can 
be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our 

20 Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, 
are not awakened by our own newly-acquired force and 
aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations 
of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance 
filling the air — to a higher life than we fell asleep from ; 

25 and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be 
good, no less than the light. That man who does not be- 
lieve that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and 
auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of 
life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. 

30 After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of 
man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and 
his Genius tries again what noble life it can make. All 
memorable events^ I should say, transpire in morning time 



WHERE I LIVED 89 

and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, ''All 
intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and art, 
and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, 
date from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like 
Memnon,° are the children of Aurora, and emit their music 5 
at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought 
keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. 
It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and 
labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there 
is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off 10 
sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their 
day if they have not been slumbering ? They are not such 
poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with 
drowsiness they would have performed something. The 
millions are awake enough for physical labor ; but only 15 
one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual 
exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or 
divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never 
yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have 
looked him in the face ? 20 

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, 
not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the 
dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I 
know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable 
ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. 25 
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, 
or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful ; 
but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very 
atmosphere and medium through which we look, which 
morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that 30 
is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his 
life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation 
of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or 



90 WALDEN 

rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the 

oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done. 

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, 

to front only the essential facts of hfe, and see if I could not 

5 learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, 
discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what 
was not life, living is so dear ; nor did I wish to practise 
resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to 
live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so 

lo sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not 
life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life 
into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it 
proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine 
meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world ; or 

15 if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to 
give a true account of it in my next excursion. ° For most 
men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, 
whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat 
hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 

20'" glorify God and enjoy him forever." 

Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells 
us that we were long ago changed into men ; like pygmies 
we fight with cranes ; it is error upon error, and clout upon 
clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous 

25 and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by 
detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more 
than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his 
ten toes, and lump the rest. Simphcity, simplicity, sim- 
plicity ! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not 

30 a hundred or a thousand ; instead of a million count half a 
dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In 
the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the 
clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one 



WHERE I LIVED 91 

items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would 
not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at 
all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator 
indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of 
three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one ; instead of s 
a hundred dishes, five ; and reduce other things in propor- 
tion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, ° made up of 
petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that 
even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any 
moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal lo 
improvements, which, by the way, are all external and 
superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown 
establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up 
by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, 
by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million 15 
households in the land ; and the only cure for it as for them 
is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan 
simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too 
fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have, 
commerce, and export ice, and talk through a tele- 20 
graph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, 
whether they do or not ; but whether we should live like 
baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not 
get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and 
nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to 25 
improve them, who will build railroads ? And if railroads 
are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But 
if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want 
railroads ? We do not ride on the railroad ; it rides upon 
us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that under- 30 
he the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a 
Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are 
covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. 



92 WALDEN 

They are sound sleepers I assure you. And every few years 
a new lot is laid down and run over ; so that, if some have 
the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune 
to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that 
5 is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the 
wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop 
the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this w^ere 
an exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of 
men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and 

lo level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may 
sometime get up again. 

Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life ? 
We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. 
Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take 

15 a thousand stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow. As 
for inork, ^ve haven't any of any consequence. We have 
the Saint Vitus' dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads 
still. If I should only give a few pulls at the parish bell- 
rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell,° there 

20 is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord, 
notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his 
excuse so many times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, 
I might almost say, but would forsake all and follow that 
sound, not mainly to save property from the flames, but, 

25 if we will confess the truth, much more to see it burn, since 
burn it must, and we, be it known, did not set it on fire, — 
or to see it put out, and have a hand in it, if that is done 
as handsomely; yes, even if it were the parish church 
itself. Hardly a man takes a half hour's nap after dinner 

30 but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "■ What's 
the news ? " as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. 
Some give directions to be waked every half hour, doubtless 
for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell 



WHERE 1 LIVED 93 

what they have dreamed. After a night's sleep the news 
is as indispensable as the breakfast. "Pray tell me any 
thing new that has happened to a man anywhere on this 
globe," — and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a 
man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the 5 
Wachito River° ; never dreaming the while that he lives 
in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and 
has but the rudiment of an eye himself. 

For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. 
I think that there are very few important communica- 10 
tions made through it. To speak critically, I never re- 
ceived more than one or two letters in my life — I wrote 
this some years ago — that w^ere worth the postage. The 
penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which 
you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which 15 
is too often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I 
never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we 
read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, 
or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steam- 
boat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Rail- 20 
road,° or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in 
the winter, — we never need read of another. One is 
enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what 
do you care for a myriad instances and applications? 
To a philosopher all neios, as it is called, is gossip, and they 25 
who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not 
a few are greedy after this gossip. There was such a rush, 
as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn the 
foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares 
of plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken 30 
by the pressure, — news which I seriously think a ready 
wit might write a twelvemonth, or twelve years, before- 
hand with sufficient accuracy. As for Spain, for instance, 



94 WALDEN 

if you know how to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta 
and Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to 
time in the right proportions, — they may have changed 
the names a little since I saw the papers, — and serve up a 
5 bull-fight when other entertainments fail, it will be true 
to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exact state 
or ruin of things in Spain as the most succinct and lucid 
reports under this head in the newspapers; and as for 
England, almost the last significant scrap of news from 

lo that quarter was the revolution of 1649° ; and if you have 
learned the history of her crops for an average year, you 
never need attend to that thing again, unless your specula- 
tions are of a merely pecuniary character. If one may 
judge who rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new 

15 does ever happen in foreign parts, a French revolution not 
excepted. 

What news ! how much more important to know what 
that is which was never old ! " Kieou-he-yu (great digni- 
tary of the state of Wei) sent a man to Khoung-tseu to 

20 know his news. Khoung-tseu caused the messenger to be 
seated near him, and questioned him in these terms : What 
is your master doing? The messenger answered with 
respect : My master desires to diminish the number of his 
faults, but he cannot come to the end of them. The 

25 messenger being gone, the philosopher remarked : What 
a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger!" 
The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers 
on their day of rest at the end of the week, — for Sunday 
is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and 

30 brave beginning of a new one, — with this one other draggle- 
tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, — 
" Pause ! Avast ! Why so seeming fast, but deadly slow ? " 
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest 



WHERE I LIVED 95 

truths, while reaUty is fabulous. If men would steadily 
observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be 
deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, 
would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Enter- 
tainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and 5 
has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along 
the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive 
that only great and worthy things have any permanent 
and absolute existence, — that petty fears and petty 
pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is 10 
always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes 
and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, 
men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and 
habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory 
foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true 15 
law and relations more clearly ° than men, who fail to live 
it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, 
that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book, that 
"there was a king's son, who, being expelled in infancy 
from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, 20 
growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to 
belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One 
of his father's ministers having discovered him, revealed 
to him what he was, and the misconception of his character 
was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So the 25 
soul," continues the Hindoo philosopher, "from the circum- 
stances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, 
until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and 
then it knows itself to be Brahme." I perceive that we in- 
habitants of New England live this mean life that we do 30 
because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things. 
We think that that is which appears to be. If a man 
should walk through this town and see only the reality, 



96 WALDEN 

where, think you, would the " Mill-dam "° go to? If he 
should give us an account of the realities he beheld there, 
we should not recognize the place in his description. 
Look at a meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a 
5 shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing really 
is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in 
your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the 
outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before 
Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed 

lo something true and sublime. But all these times and 
places and occasions are now and here. God himself cul- 
minates in the present moment, and will never be more 
divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled 
to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the 

15 perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that sur- 
rounds us. The universe constantly and obediently an- 
swers to our conceptions ; whether we travel fast or slow, 
the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving 
them. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble 

20 a design but some of his posterity at least could accom- 
plish it. 

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not 
be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's 
wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or 

25 breakfast, gently and without perturbation; let company 
come and let company go, let the bells ring and the chil- 
dren cry, — determined to make a day of it. Why should 
we knock under and go with the stream ? Let us not be 
upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirl- 

30 pool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. 
Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the 
way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning 
vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast° like 



WHERE I LIVED 97 

Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse 
for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run ? We 
will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle 
ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through 
the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, 5 
and delusion, and appearances, that alluvion which covers 
the globe, through Paris and London, through New York 
and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through 
poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a 
hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, 10 
and say. This is, and no mistake ; and then begin, having 
a point d'app2ii° below freshet and frost and fire, a place 
where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post 
safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer,° but a Realom- 
eter,° that future ages might know how deep a freshet of 15 
shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. 
If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you 
will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were 
a cimeter,° and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the 
heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your 20 
mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. 
If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats 
and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us 
go about our business. 

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it ; 25 
but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how 
shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity 
remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose 
bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I 
know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always 30 
been regretting that I was not as wise° as the day I was 
born. The intellect is a cleaver ; it discerns and rifts its 
way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any 



9« WALDEN 

more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is 
hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated 
in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for 
burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore-paws, 
5 and with it I w^ould mine and burrow my way through 
these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere 
hereabouts ; so by the divining rod and thin rising vapors 
I judge ; and here I will begin to mine. 



READING 

With a little more deliberation in the choice of their 
pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially stu- 
dents and observers, for certainly their° nature and des- 
tiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating property 
for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a 5 
state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in 
dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no 
change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo 
philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of 
the divinity ; and still the robe remains raised, and I gaze 10 
upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that 
was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews 
the vision. No dust has settled on that robe ; no time has 
elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which 
we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, 15 
present, nor future. 

My residence was more favorable, not only to thought 
but to serious reading, than a university; and though I 
was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, 
I had more than ever come within the influence of those 20 
books which circulate round the world, whose sentences 
were first written on bark, and are now merely copied 
from time to time on to linen paper. Says the poet Mir 
Camar Uddin Mast, " Being seated to run through the 
region of the spiritual world, I have had this advantage in 25 
books. To be intoxicated by a single glass of wine; I 

99 



100 WALDEN 

have experienced this pleasure when I have drunk the 
hquor of the esoteric" doctrines/' I kept Homer's 
Ihad on my table through the summer, though 1 looked at 
his page only now and then. Incessant labor with my 

5 hands, at first, for I had my house to finish and my beans 
to hoe at the same time, made more study impossible. 
Yet I sustained myself by the prospect of such reading in 
future. I read one or two shallow books of travel in the 
intervals of my work, till that employment made me 

lo ashamed of myself, and I asked where it was then that / 
lived. 

The student may read Homer° or iEschylus in the 
Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for 
it implies that he in some measure emulates their heroes, 

15 and consecrates morning hours to their pages. The heroic 
books, even if printed in the character of our mother 
tongue will always be in a language dead to degenerate 
times ; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each 
word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common 

20 use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity 
we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all 
its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the 
heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and 
the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, 

25 as ever. It is worth the expense of youthful days and 
costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient 
language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the 
street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It 
is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the 

30 few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes 
speak as if the study of the classics would at length make 
way for more modern and practical studies; but the 
adventurous student will always study classics, in what- 



READING 101 

ever language they may be written and however ancient 
they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest 
recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles 
which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the 
most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona° never 5 
gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because 
she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in the 
true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the 
reader more than any exercise which the customs of the 
day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes 10 
underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life 
to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and 
reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even 
to be able to speak the language of that nation by which 
they are written, for there is a memorable interval between 15 
the spoken and the written language, the language heard 
and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, 
a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we 
learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. 
The other is the maturity and experience of that ; if that 20 
is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved 
and select expression, too significant to be heard by the 
ear, which we must be born again in order to speak. The 
crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and Latin 
tongues in the middle ages were not entitled by the 25 
accident of birth to read the words of genius written in 
those languages ; for these were not written in that Greek 
or Latin which they knew, but in the select language of 
literature. They had not learned the noble dialects of 
Greece and Rome, but the very materials on which they 30 
were written were waste paper to them, and they prized 
instead a cheap contemporary literature. But when the 
several nations of Europe had acquired distinct though 



102 WALDEN 

rude written languages of their own, sufficient for the 
purposes of their rising hteratures, then first learning 
revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from that 
5 remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the Roman 
and Grecian multitude could not hear, after the lapse of 
ages a few scholars read, and a few scholars only are still 
reading it. 

However much we may admire the orator's occasional 
bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are com- 

lo monly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language 
as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. 
There are the stars, and they who can may read them. 
The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. 
They are not exhalations like our daily colloquies and vapo- 

15 rous breath. What is called eloquence in the forum is 
commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator 
yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and 
speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him ; 
but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, 

20 and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd 
which inspired the orator, speaks to the intellect and 
heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand 
him. 

No wonder that Alexander^ carried the IHad with 

25 him on his expedition in a precious casket. A written 
word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once 
more intimate with us and more universal than any other 
work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. 
It may be translated into every language, and not only be 

30 read but actually breathed from all human hps ; — not be 
represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved 
out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient 
man's thought becomes a modern man's speech. Two 



READING 103 

thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of 
Grecian Hterature, as to her marbles, only a maturer 
golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own 
serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them 
against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured s 
wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations 
and nations. Books, the oldest and best, stand naturally 
and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have 
no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and 
sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. lo 
Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in 
every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an 
influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps 
scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his 
coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the 15 
circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to 
those still higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect 
and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his 
culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and 
further proves his good sense by the pains which he takes 20 
to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose 
want he so keenly feels ; and thus it is that he becomes 
the founder of a family. 

Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics 
in the language in which they were written must have a 25 
very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race ; 
for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever 
been made into any modern tongue, unless our civilization 
itself may be regarded as such a transcript. Homer has 
never j^et been printed in English, ° nor ^Eschylus, nor 3° 
Vergil even, — works as refined, as solidly done, and as 
beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, 
say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, 



104 WALDEN 

equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the hfelong 
and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only 
talk of forgetting them who never knew them. It will 
be soon enough to forget them when we have the learning 
5 and the genius which will enable us to attend to and 
appreciate them. That age will be rich indeed when those 
relics which we call Classics, and the still olderand more than 
classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall 
have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall 

lo be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas° and Bibles, with 
Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the cen- 
turies to come shall have successively deposited their 
trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may 
hope to scale heaven at last. 

15 The works of the great poets have never yet been read 
by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They 
have only been read as the multitude read the stars, 
at most astrologically, not astronomically. Most men 
have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as 

20 they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and 
not be cheated in trade ; but of reading as a noble intel- 
lectual exercise they know little or nothing ; yet this only 
is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a lux- 
ury and suffers the noble faculties to sleep the while, but 

25 what we have to stand on tiptoe to read and devote our 
most alert and wakeful hours to. 

I think that having learned our letters we should read 
the best that is in literature, and not be forever repeating 
our a b abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or 

30 fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form° 
all our lives. Most men are satisfied if the}^ read or hear 
read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom 
of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their hves 



READING 105 

vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy 
reading. There is a work in several volumes in our Cir- 
culating Library entitled Little Reading, which I thought 
referred to a town° of that name which I had not been 
to. There are those who, like cormorants and ostriches, 5 
can digest all sorts of this, even after the fullest dinner of 
meats and vegetables, for they suffer nothing to be wasted. 
If others are the machines to provide this provender, they 
are the machines to read it. They read the nine thou- 
sandth tale about Zebulon and Sephronia, and how they 10 
loved as none had ever loved before, and neither did the 
course of their true love run smooth, — at any rate, how it 
did run and stumble, and get up again and go on ! how some 
poor unfortunate got up on to a steeple, who had better 
never gone up as far as the belfry ; and then, having need- 15 
lessly got him up there, the happy novelist rings the bell 
for all the world to come together and hear, O dear ! 
how he did get down again ! For my part, I think that 
they had better metamorphose all such aspiring heroes of 
universal noveldom into man weathercocks, as they used 20 
to put heroes among the constellations, and let them 
swing around there till they are rusty, and not come down 
at all to bother honest men with their pranks. The next 
time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the 
meeting-house burn down. ''The Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, 25 
a Romance of the Middle Ages, by the celebrated author 
of 'Tittle Tol-Tan,' to appear in monthly parts; a great 
rush; don't all come together." All this they read with 
saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and with 
unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no 30 
sharpening, just as some little four-year-old bencher his 
two-cent gilt-covered edition of Cinderella, — without any 
improvement, that I can see, in the pronunciation, or 



106 WALDEN 

accent, or emphasis, or any more skill in extracting or in- 
serting the moral. The result is dulness of sight, a stagna- 
tion of the vital circulations, and a general deliquium° 
and sloughing off of all the intellectual faculties. This 

S sort of gingerbread is baked daily and more sedulously 
than pure wheat or rye-and-Indian in almost every oven, 
and finds a surer market. 

The best books are not read even by those who are 
called good readers. What does our Concord culture 

lo amount to ? There is in this town, with a very few excep- 
tions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in 
English literature, whose words all can read and spell. 
Even the college-bred and so-called liberally educated 
men here and elsewhere have really little or no acquaint- 

15 ance with the English classics ; and as for the recorded wis- 
dom of mankind, the ancient classics and Bibles, which 
are accessible to all who will know of them, there are the 
feeblest efforts anywhere made to become acquainted with 
them. I know a wood-chopper, of middle age, who takes 

20 a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, 
but to "keep himself in practice,'' he being a Canadian by 
birth ; and when I ask him what he considers the best thing 
he can do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up 
and add to his English. This is about as much as the col- 

25 lege bred generally do or aspire to do, and they take an 
Enghsh paper for the purpose. One who has just come 
from reading perhaps one of the best English books will 
find how many with whom he can converse about it? 
Or suppose he comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic 

30 in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the so- 
called illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, 
but must keep silence about it. Indeed, there is hardly 
the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the 



READING 107 

difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered 
the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, 
and has any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic 
reader; and as for the sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of 
mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles ? 5 
Most men do not know that any nation but the Hebrews 
have had a Scripture. A man, any man, will go consider- 
ably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar ; but here are 
golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have 
uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age i© 
have assured us of; — and yet we learn to read only as 
far as Easy Reading, the primers and class-books, and 
when we leave school, the "Little Reading," and story 
books, which are for boys and beginners ; and our reading, 
our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, 15 
worthy only of pygmies and manikins. ° 

I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our 
Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known 
here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read 
his book ? As if Plato were my townsman and I never saw 20 
him, — my next neighbor and I never heard him speak 
or attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually 
is it ? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal 
in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them. 
We are under-bred, and low-lived and illiterate ; and in this 25 
respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction 
between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot 
read at all, and the illiterateness of him who has learned 
to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We 
should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly 30 
by first knowing how good they were. We are a race of 
tit-men, ° and soar but little higher in our intellectual 
flights than the columns of the daily paper. 



108 WALDEN 

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. 
There are probably words addressed to our condition 
exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, 
would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to 

5 our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of 
things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in 
his life from the reading of a book. The book exists for 
us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal 
new ones. The at present unutterable things we may 

10 find somewhere uttered. These same questions that 
disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn 
occurred to all the wise men ; not one has been omitted ; 
and each has answered them, according to his ability, 
by his words and his life. Moreover, with wisdom we 

15 shall learn hberality. The solitary hired man on a farm 
in the outskirts of Concord, who has had his second birth 
and peculiar religious experience, and is driven as he be- 
lieves into silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith, 
may think it is not true; but Zoroaster, ° thousands of 

20 years ago, travelled the same road and had the same ex- 
perience ; but he, being wise, knew it to be universal, and 
treated his neighbors accordingly, and is even said to have 
invented and established worship among men. Let him 
humbly commune with Zoroaster then, and, through the 

25 liberalizing influence of all the worthies, with Jesus 

Christ himself, and let ''our church" go by the board. 

We boast that we belong to the nineteenth century 

and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. 

But consider how httle this village does for its own 

30 culture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor 
to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of 
us. We need to be provoked, — goaded like oxen, as 
we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent 



READING 109 

system of common schools, schools for infants only ; but 
excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, and lat- 
terly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the state, 
no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any ar- 
ticle of bodily ahment or ailment than on our mental ali- 5 
ment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that 
we did not leave off our education when we begin to be 
men and women. It is time that villages were universities, 
and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, 
with leisure — if they are indeed so well off — to pursue 10 
liberal studies the rest of their lives. Shall the world be 
confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot 
students be boarded here and get a liberal education under 
the skies of Concord ? Can we not hire some Abelard° to 
lecture to us? Alas ! what with foddering the cattle and 15 
tending the store, we are kept from school too long, 
and our education is sadly neglected. In this country, 
the village should in some respects take the place of the 
nobleman of Europe. It should be the patron of the fine 
arts. It is rich enough. It wants only the magnanimity 20 
and refinement. It can spend money enough on such things 
as farmers and traders value, but it is thought Utopian to 
propose spending money for things which more intelligent 
men know to be of far more worth. This town has spent 
seventeen thousand dollars on a tdwn-house, thank fortune 25 
or politics, but probably it will not spend so much on 
living wit, the true meat to put into that shell, in a hundred 
years. The one hundred and twenty-five dollars annually 
subscribed for a Lyceum in the winter is better spent than 
any other equal sum raised in the town. If we live in the 30 
nineteenth century, why should we not enjoy the advan- 
tages which the nineteenth century offers? Why should 
our fife be in any respects provincial ? If we will read 



110 WALDEN 

newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the 
best newspaper in the world at once ? — not be sucking the 
pap of ''neutral family" papers, or browsing "Olive- 
Branches "° here in New England. Let the reports of 

5 all the learned societies come to us, and we will see if 
they know any thing. Why should we leave it to Harper 
& Brothers and Redding & Co.° to select our reading? 
As the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself 
with whatever conduces to his culture, — genius — learn- 

lo ing — wit — books — paintings — statuary — music — 
philosophical instruments, and the like ; so let the village 
do, — not stop short at a pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, 
a parish library, and three selectmen, because our pilgrim 
forefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock 

15 with these. To act collectively is according to the spirit 
of our institutions; and I am confident that, as our cir- 
cumstances are more flourishing, our means are greater 
than the nobleman's. New England can hire all the wise 
men in the world to come and teach her, and board them 

20 round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is 
the uncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen, let 
us have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one 
bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw 
one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which 

25 surrounds us. 



SOUNDS 

But while we are confined to books, though the most 
select and classic, and read only particular written lan- 
guages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, 
we are in danger of forgetting the language which all 
things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is 5 
copious and standard. Much is pubhshed, but little printed. 
The rays which stream through the shutter will be no 
longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. 
No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of 
being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, 10 
or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or 
the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, 
compared with the discipline of looking always at what is 
to be seen ? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a 
seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk 15 
on into futurity. 

I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. 
Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when 
I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present 
moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I 20 
love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer 
morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my 
sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a rever}'', 
amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undis- 
turbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or 25 
flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling 
111 



112 WALDEN 

in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's 
wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse 
of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and 
they were far better than any work of the hands would have 
5 been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but 
so much over and above my usual allowance. I reaUzed 
what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the for- 
saking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the 
hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work 

lo of mine ; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and 
nothing, memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing 
like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good 
fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hick- 
ory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed 

15 warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were 
not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen 
deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the 
ticking of a clock°; for I. lived like the Puri Indians, of 
whom it is said that "for yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow 

20 they have only one word, and they express the variety 
of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for 
to-morrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was 
sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if 
the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I 

25 should not have been found wanting. A man must find 
his. occasions in himself, it is true. 

The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove 
his indolence. 

I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, 

30 over those who were obliged to look abroad for amuse- 
ment, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was 
become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. It 
was a drama of many scenes and without an end. If we 



SOUNDS 113 

were always indeed getting our living, and regulating our 
lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, 
we should never be troubled with ennui. Follow your 
genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a 
fresh prospect every hour. Housework was a pleasant s 
pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, set- 
ting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and 
bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the 
floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and 
then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white ; and by the lo 
time the villagers had broken their fast the morning sun 
had dried my house sufficiently to allow me to move in 
again, and my meditations were almost uninterrupted. 
It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out on 
the grass, making a little pile like a gypsj^'s pack, and my 15 
three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books 
and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. 
They seemed glad to get out themselves, and as if unwilling 
to be brought in. I was sometimes tempted to stretch an 
awning over them and take my seat there. It was worth 20 
the while to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the 
free wind blow on them ; so much more interesting most 
familiar objects look out of doors than in the house. A 
bird sits on the next bough, life-everlasting grows under 
the table, blackberry vines run round its legs ; pine cones, 25 
chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves are strewn about. 
It looked as if this was the way these forms came to 
be transferred to our furniture, tables, chairs, and bed- 
steads, — because they once stood in their midst. 

My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the 30 
edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of 
pitch pines and hickories, and half a dozen rods from the 
pond, to which a narrow footpath led down the hill. In 
I 



114 WALDEN 

my front yard grew the strawberry, blackberry, and 
life-everlasting, johnswort and goldenrod, shrub-oaks and 
sand-cherry, blueberry and ground-nut. Near the end of 
May, the sand-cherry {cerasus pumila) adorned the sides 
5 of the path with its delicate flowers arranged in umbels 
cylindrically about its short stems, which last, in the fall, 
weighed down with good-sized and handsome cherries, 
fell over in wreaths like rays on every side. I tasted 
them out of compliment to Nature, though they were 

lo scarcely palatable. The sumach {rhus glabra) grew 
luxuriantly about the house, pushing up through the 
embankment which I had made, and growing five or six 
feet the first season. Its broad pinnate tropical leaf 
was pleasant though strange to look on. The large buds, 

15 suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks 
which had seemed to be dead, developed themselves as 
by magic into graceful green and tender boughs, an inch 
in diameter ; and sometimes, as I sat at my window, so 
heedlessly did they grow^ and tax their weak joints, I heard 

20 a fresh and tender bough suddenly fall like a fan to the 
ground, when there was not a breath of air stirring, 
broken off by its own weight. In August, the large masses 
of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild 
bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, 

25 and by their weight again bent down and broke the 
tender limbs. 

As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks 
are circling about my clearing; the tantivy° of wild 
pigeons, flying by twos and threes athwart my view, or 
30 perching restless on the white-pine boughs behind my 
house, gives a voice to the air; a fishhawk dimples the 
glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish; a mink 



SOUNDS 115 

steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog 
by the shore ; the sedge is bending under the weight of 
the reed-birds flitting hither and thither; and for the 
last half hour I have heard the rattle of railroad cars, now 
dying away and then reviving like the beat of a partridge, 5 
conveying travellers from Boston to the country. For 
I did not live so out of the world as that boy, who, as I 
hear, was put out to a farmer in the east part of the town, 
but ere long ran away and came home again, quite down 
at the heel and homesick. He had never seen such a 10 
dull and out-of-the-way place; the folks were all gone 
off ; why, you couldn't even hear the whistle ! I doubt 
if there is such a place in Massachusetts now ; 

" In truth, our village has become a butt 
For one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o'er 15 

Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is — Concord !" 

The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hun- 
dred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to the 
village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to 
society by this link. The men on the freight trains, who 20 
go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an 
old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently 
they take me for an employe ; and so I am. I too w^ould 
fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth. 

The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my w^oods 25 
summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk 
sailing over some farmer's yard, informing me that many 
restless city merchants are arriving within the circle of the 
town, or adventurous country traders from the other side. 
As they come under one horizon, they shout their 3° 
w^arning to get off the track to the other, heard sometimes 
through the circles of two towns. Here come your gro- 



116 WALDEN 

ceries, country ; your rations, countrymen ! Nor is there 
any man so independent on his farm that he can say them 
nay. And here's your pay for them ! screams the country- 
man's whistle; timber hke long battering-rams going 
5 twenty miles an hour against the city's walls, and chairs 
enough to seat all the weary and heavy laden that dwell 
within them. With such huge and lumbering civility 
the country hands a chair to the city. All the Indian 
huckleberry hills are stripped, all the cranberry meadows 

lo are raked into the city. Up comes the cotton, down goes 
the woven cloth ; up comes the silk, down goes the woollen ; 
up come the books, but down goes the wit that writes 
them. 

When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving 

IS off with planetary motion, — or, rather, like a comet, 
for the beholder knows not if with that velocity and 
with that direction it will ever revisit this system, since 
its orbit does not look like a returning curve, — with its 
steam cloud like a banner streaming behind in golden 

20 and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I 
have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to the 
light — as if this travelling demigod, this cloud-compeller, 
would ere long take the sunset sky for the livery of his 
train ; when I hear the iron horse° make the hills echo 

25 with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his 
feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils 
(what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put 
into the new Mythology I don't know), it seems as if the 
earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it. If all 

30 were as it seems, and men made the elements their ser- 
vants for noble ends ! If the cloud that hangs over the 
engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as benefi- 
cent as that which floats over the farmer's fields, then 



SOUNDS 117 

the elements and Nature herself would cheerfully accom- 
pany men on their errands and be their escort. 

I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same 
feeling that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly 
more regular. Their train of clouds stretching far be- 5 
hind and rising higher and higher, going to heaven while 
the cars are going to Boston, conceals the sun for a minute 
and casts my distant field into the shade, a celestial 
train beside which the petty train of cars which hugs the 
earth is but the barb of the spear. The stabler of the 10 
iron horse was up early this winter morning by the light 
of the stars amid the mountains, to fodder and harness 
his steed. Fire, too, was awakened thus early to put 
the vital heat in him and get him off. If the enterprise 
were as innocent as it is early ! If the snow lies deep, 15 
they strap on his snow-shoes, and with the giant plough 
plough a furrow from the mountains to the seaboard, in 
which the cars, like a following drill-barrow, ° sprinkle all 
the restless men and floating merchandise in the country 
for seed. All day the fire-steed flies over the country, 20 
stopping only that his master may rest, and I am awakened 
by his tramp and defiant snort at midnight, when in some 
remote glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased 
in ice and snow ; and he will reach his stall only with the 
morning star, to start once more on his travels without rest 25 
or slumber. Or perchance, at evening, I hear him in 
his stable blowing off the superfluous energy of the day, 
that he may calm his nerves and cool his liver and brain 
for a few hours of iron slumber. If the enterprise were as 
heroic and commanding as it is protracted and unwearied ! 30 

Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of 
towns, where once only the hunter penetrated by day, 
in the darkest night dart these bright saloons without the 



118 WALDEN 

knowledge of their inhabitants ; this moment stopping at 
some brilliant station-house in town or city, where a social 
crowd is gathered, the next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring 
the owl and fox. The startings and arrivals of the cars 
5 are now the epochs in the village day. They go and 
come with such regularity and precision, and their whistle 
can be heard so far, that the farmers set their clocks by 
them, and thus one well-conducted institution regulates 
a whole country. Have not men improved somewhat 

lo in punctuality since the railroad was invented ? Do they 
not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in 
the stage-office? There is something electrifying in the 
atmosphere of the former place. I have been astonished 
at the miracles it has wrought ; that some of my neighbors, 

15 who, I should have prophesied, once for all, would never 
get to Boston by so prompt a conveyance, are on hand 
when the bell rings. To do things "railroad fashion" 
is now the by-word ; and it is worth the while to be warned 
so often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track. 

20 There is no stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the 
heads of the mob, in this case. We have constructed a 
fate, an Atropos° that never turns aside. (Let that be the 
name of your engine.) Men are advertised that at a 
certain hour and minute these bolts will be shot toward 

25 particular points of the compass ; yet it interferes with no 
man's business, and the children go to school on the 
other track. We live the steadier for it. We are all 
educated thus to be the sons of Tell.° The air is full of 
invisible bolts. Every path but your own is the path of 

30 fate. Keep your own track, then. 

What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise 
and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to 
Jupiter. I see these men every day go about their busi- 



S0U2^DS 119 

ness with more or less courage and content, doing more 
even than they suspect, and perchance better employed 
than they could have consciousl}^ devised. I am less 
affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in 
the front hne at Buena Vista, ° than by the steady and s 
cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plough for 
their winter quarters; who have not merely the three- 
o'clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought 
was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so 
early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the lo 
sinews of their iron steed are frozen. On this morning of 
the Great Snow, perchance, which is still raging and 
chilling men's blood, I hear the muffled tone of their 
engine bell from out the fog bank of their chilled breath, 
which announces that the cars are coming, without long 15 
delay, notwithstanding the veto of a New England 
north-east snow-storm, and I behold the ploughmen 
covered with snow and rime, their heads peering above 
the mould-board which is turning down other than daisies 
and the nests of field-mice, hke bowlders of the Sierra 20 
Nevada, that occupy an outside place in the universe. 

Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, 
adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its 
methods withal, far more so than many fantastic enter- 
prises and sentimental experiments, and hence its singu- 25 
lar success. I am refreshed and expanded when the 
freight train rattles past me, and I smell the stores which 
go dispensing their odors all the way from Long Wharf ° 
to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of 
coral reefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the 30 
extent of the globe. I feel more like a citizen of the 
world at the sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so 
many flaxen New England heads the next summer, the 



120 WALDEN 

Manila hemp, and cocoanut husks, the old junk, gunny 
bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This car-load of torn 
sails is more legible and interesting now than if they should 
be wrought into paper and printed books. Who can 

5 write so graphically the history of the storms they have 
weathered as these rents have done? They are proof- 
sheets which need no correction. Here goes lumber from 
the Maine woods, which did not go out to sea in the last 
freshet, risen four dollars on the thousand because of what 

10 did go out or was split up ; pine, spruce, cedar, — first, 
second, third, and fourth qualities, so lately all of one 
quality, to wave over the bear, and moose, and caribou. 
Next rolls Thomaston lime,° a prime lot, which will 
get far among the hills before it gets slacked, ° These 

15 rags in bales, of all hues and qualities, the lowest condi- 
tion to which cotton and linen descend, the final result 
of dress, — of patterns which are now no longer cried up, 
unless it be in Milwaukee, as those splendid articles, 
English, French, or American prints, ginghams, muslins, 

20 etc., gathered from all quarters both of fashion and poverty, 
going to become paper of one color or a few shades only, 
on which forsooth will be written tales of real life, high 
and low, and founded on fact I This closed car smells 
of salt fish, the strong New England and commercial 

25 scent, reminding me of the Grand Banks and the fisheries. 
Who has not seen a salt fish, thoroughly cured for this 
world, so that nothing can spoil it, and putting the perse- 
verance of the saints to the blush? with which you may 
sweep or pave the streets, and split your kindlings, and 

30 the teamster shelter himself and his lading against sun, 
wind, and rain behind it, — and the trader, as a Concord 
trader once did, hang it up by his door for a sign when he 
commences business, until at last his oldest customer 



SOUNDS 121 

cannot tell surely whether it be animal, vegetable, or 
mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as a snowflake, and if 
it be put into a pot and boiled, will come out an excellent 
dun fish° for a Saturday's dinner. Next Spanish hides, 
with the tails still preserving their twist and the angle of 5 
elevation they had when the oxen that wore them were 
careering over the pampas of the Spanish main,° — a 
type of all obstinacy, and evincing how almost hopeless 
and incurable are all constitutional vices. I confess 
that, practically speaking, when I have learned a man's 10 
real disposition, I have no hope of changing it for the 
better or worse in this state of existence. As the Orien- 
tals say, "A cur's tail may be warmed, and pressed, and 
bound round with ligatures, and after a twelve years' 
labor bestowed upon it, still it will retain its natural 15 
form." The only effectual cure for such inveteracies as ' 
these tails exhibit is to make glue of them, which I believe 
is what is usually done with them, and then they will 
stay put and stick. Here is a hogshead of molasses or of 
brandy directed to John Smith, Cuttingsville,° Vermont, 20 
some trader among the Green Mountains, who imports 
for the farmers near his clearing, and now perchance 
stands over his bulk-head and thinks of the last arrivals 
on the coast, how the}'' may affect the price for him, 
telling his customers this moment, as he has told them 25 
twenty times before this morning, that he expects some 
by the next train of prime quality. It is advertised in the 
Cuttingsville Times. 

While these things go up other things come down. 
Warned by the whizzing sound, I look up from my book 30 
and see some tall pine, hewn on far northern hills, which 
has winged its way over the Green Mountains and the 
Connecticut, shot like an arrow through the township 



122 WALDEN 

within ten minutes, and scarce another eye beholds it ; going 

"to be the mast 
Of some great ammiral."° 

And hark ! here comes the cattle-train bearing the cattle 
5 of a thousand hills, ° sheepcots, stables, and cowyards 
in the air, drovers with their sticks, and shepherd boys 
in the midst of their flocks, all but the mountain pastures, 
whirled along like leaves blown from the mountains 
by the September gales. The air is filled with the bleat- 

lo ing of calves and sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as if a 
pastoral valley were going by. When the old bell-wether° 
at the head rattles his bell, the mountains do indeed skip 
like rams° and the little hills like lambs. A car-load of 
drovers, too, in the midst, on a level with their droves 

15 now, their vocation gone, but still clinging to their useless 
sticks as their badge of office. But their dogs, where are 
they ? It is a stampede to them ; they are quite thrown 
out ; they have lost the scent. Methinks I hear them 
barking behind the Peterboro' Hills, ° or panting up the 

20 western slope of the Green Mountains. They will not be 
in at the death. Their vocation, too, is gone. Their 
fidelity and sagacity are below par now. They will 
slink back to their kennels in disgrace, or perchance run 
wild and strike a league with the wolf and the fox. So is 

25 your pastoral life whirled past and away. But the bell 
rings, and I must get off the track and let the cars go by : — 

What's the railroad to me ? 
I never go to see 
Where it ends. 
30 It fills a few hollows, 

And makes banks for the swallows, 
It sets the sand a-blowing, 
And the blackberries a-growing. 



SOUNDS 123 

but I cross it like a cart-path in the woods. I will not 
have my eyes put out and my ears spoiled by its smoke 
and steam and hissing. 

Now that the cars are gone by and all the restless world 
with them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feel their 5 
rumbling, I am more alone than ever. For the rest of the 
long afternoon, perhaps, my meditations are interrupted 
only by the faint rattle of a carriage or team along the 
distant highway. 

Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, 10 
Acton, Bedford, ° or Concord bell, when the wind was 
favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, 
worth importing into the wilderness. At a sufficient 
distance over the woods this sound acquires a certain 
vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were 15 
the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound heard at 
the greatest possible distance produces one and the same 
effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the inter- 
vening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth inter- 
esting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it. There 20 
came to me in this case a melody which the air had 
strained, and which had conversed with every leaf and 
needle of the wood, that portion of the sound which the 
elements had taken up and modulated and echoed from 
vale to vale. The echo is, to some extent, an original 25 
sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not 
merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, 
but partly the voice of the wood ; the same trivial words 
and notes sung by a wood-nymph. 

At evening, the distant lowing of some cow in the hori- 30 
zon beyond the woods sounded sweet and melodious, and 
at first I would mistake it for the voices of certain minstrels 



124 WALDEN 

by whom I was sometimes serenaded, who might be 
straying over hill and dale ; but soon I was not unpleas- 
antly disappointed when it was prolonged into the 
cheap and natural music of the cow. I do not mean to be 
5 satirical, but to express my appreciation of those youths' 
singing, when I state that I perceived clearly that it was 
akin to the music of the cow, and they w^ere at length one 
articulation of Nature. 

Regularly at half-past seven, in one part of the summer, 
lo after the evening train had gone by, the whippoorwills 
chanted their vespers for half an hour, sitting on a stump 
by my door, or upon the ridgepole of the house. They 
would begin to sing almost with as much precision as a 
clock, within five minutes of a particular time, referred 
IS to the setting of the sun, every evening. I had a rare 
opportunity to become acquainted with their habits. 
Sometimes I heard four or five at once in different parts of 
the wood, by accident one a bar° behind another, and 
so near me that I distinguished not only the cluck after 
20 each note, but often that singular buzzing sound like a 
fi}'- in a spider's web, only proportionally louder. Some- 
times one would circle round and round me in the woods 
a few feet distant as if tethered by a string, when probably 
I was near its eggs. They sang at intervals throughout the 
25 night, and were again as musical as ever just before and 
about dawn. 

When other birds are still the screech-owls take up the 
strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their 
dismal scream is truly Ben Jonsonian.° Wise mid- 
30 night hags ! It is no honest and blunt tu-whit tu-who of 
the poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn grave- 
yard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide lovers 
remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal love 



SOUNDS 125 

in the infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, 
their doleful responses, trilled along the woodside; re- 
minding me sometimes of music and singing birds ; as if 
it were the dark and tearful side of music, the regrets and 
sighs that would fain be sung. They are the spirits, the 5 
low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls 
that once in human shape nightwalked the earth and did 
the deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins with their 
wailing hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their trans- 
gressions. They give me a new sense of variety and 10 
capacity of that nature which is our common dwelling. 
Oh-0-0-0 that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! sighs one on 
this side of the pond, and circles with the restlessness of 
despair to some new perch on the gray oaks. Then — that 
I never had been bor-r-r-n ! echoes another on the farther 15 
side with tremulous sincerity, and — bor-r-r-r-n ! comes 
faintly from far in the Lincoln woods. 

I was also serenaded by a hooting owl. Near at hand 
you could fancy it the most melancholy sound in Nature, 
as if she meant by this to stereotype and make permanent 20 
in her choir the dying moans of a human being, — some 
poor weak relic of mortality who has left hope behind, and 
howls like an animal, yet with human sobs, on entering 
the dark valley, made more awful by a certain gurgling 
melodiousness. I find myself beginning with the letters 25 
gl when I try to imitate it, — expressive of a mind which 
has reached the gelatinous mildewy stage in the rtiortifica- . 
tion of all healthy and courageous thought. It reminded 
me of ghouls and idiots and insane bowlings. But now 
one answers from far woods in a strain made realty 30 
melodious by distance, — Hoo hoo, hoo, hoorer hoo ; and 
indeed for the most i)art it suggested only pleasing asso- 
ciations, whether heard by day or night, summer or winter. 



126 WALDEN 

i rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic 
and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably 
suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illus- 
trates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which 
5 men have not recognized. They represent the stark twi- 
Hght and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day 
the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, 
where the single spruce stands hung with usnea° lichens, and 
small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid 

lo the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath ; 
but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a dif- 
ferent race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of 
Nature there. 

Late in the evening I heard the distant rumbling of 

15 wagons over bridges, — a sound heard farther than almost 
any other at night, — the baying of dogs, and sometimes 
again the lowing of some disconsolate cow in a distant 
barn-yard. In the meanwhile all the shore rang with 
the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient wine- 

20 bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, trying to sing a 
catch in their Stygian° lake, — if the Walden nymphs 
will pardon the comparison, for though there are almost 
no weeds, there are frogs there, — who would fain keep 
up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though 

25 their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, 
mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor, and 
become 'only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet 
intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, 
but mere saturation and waterloggedness and distention. 

30 The most aldermanic,° with his chin upon a Jieart-leaf, 
which serves for a napkin to his drooling chaps, under 
this northern shore quaffs a deep draught of the once 
scorned water, and passes round the cup with the ejacu- 



SOUNDS 127 

lation trr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oonk ! and straight- 
way comes over the water from some distant cove the 
same password repeated, where the next in seniority and 
girth has gulped down to his mark° ; and when this observ- 
ance has made the circuit of the shores, then ejaculates 5 
the master of ceremonies, with satisfaction, tr-r-r-oonk! 
and each in his turn repeats the same down to the least 
distended, leakiest, and flabbiest paunched, that there be 
no mistake; and then the bowl goes round again and 
again, until the sun disperses the morning mist, and only 10 
the patriarch is not under the pond, but vainly bellowing 
troo7ik from time to time, and pausing for a reply. 

I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of cock-crow- 
ing from my clearing, and I thought that it might be worth 
the while to keep a cockerel for his music merely, as a 15 
singing bird. The note of this once wild Indian pheasant 
is certainly the most remarkable of any bird's, and if 
they could be naturalized without being domesticated, 
it would soon become the most famous sound in our 
woods, surpassing the clangor of the goose and the hoot- 20 
ing of the owl ; and then imagine the cackling of the hens 
to fill the pauses when their lords' clarions rested ! No 
wonder that man added this bird to his tame stock, — to 
say nothing of the eggs, and drumsticks. To walk in a 
winter morning in a wood where these birds abounded, 25 
their native woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow on 
the trees, clear and shrill for miles over the resounding 
earth, drowning the feeble notes of other birds, — think 
of it ! It would put nations on the alert. Who would not 
be early to rise, and rise earher and earlier every successive 30 
day of his life, till he became unspeakably healthy, wealthy, 
and wise°? This foreign bird's note is celebrated by the 
poets of all countries along with the notes of their native 



128 WALDEN 

songsters. All climates agree with brave Chanticleer. ° 
He is more indigenous even than the natives. His health 
is ever good, his lungs are sound, his spirits never flag. 
Even the sailor on the Atlantic and Pacific is awakened by 

5 his voice ; but its shrill sound never roused me from my 
slumbers. I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, 
so that you would have said there was a deficiency of 
domestic sounds; neither the churn, nor the spinning 
wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing 

lo of the urn, nor children crying, to comfort one. An 
old-fashioned man would have lost his senses or died of 
ennui before this. Not even rats in the wall, for they 
were starved out, or rather were never baited in, — only 
squirrels on the roof and under the floor, a whippoorwill 

15 on the ridgepole, a blue-jay screaming beneath the window, 
a hare or woodchuck under the house, a screech-owl or a 
cat-owl behind it, a flock of wild geese or a laughing loon 
on the pond, and a fox to bark in the night. Not even a 
lark or an oriole, those mild plantation birds, ever visited 

20 my clearing. No cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle in 
the yard. No yard ! but unfenced Nature reaching up to 
your very sills. A young forest growing up under your 
windows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines break- 
ing through into your cellar ; sturdy pitch-pines rubbing 

25 and creaking against the shingles for want of room, their 
roots reaching quite under the house. Instead of a scuttle 
or a blind blown off in the gale, — a pine tree snapped off 
or torn up by the roots behind your house for fuel. In- 
stead of no path to the front-yard gate in the Great Snow, 

30 — no gate — no front-yard, — and no path to the civil- 
ized world ! 



SOLITUDE 

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is 
one sense, and imbibes dehght through every pore. I go 
and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of her- 
self. As I walk along the stony shore to the pond in my 
shirt-sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, 5 
and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements 
are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump 
to usher in the night, and the note of the whippoorwill 
is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sym- 
pathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost 10 
takes away my breath ; yet, hke the lake, my serenity is 
rippled but not ruffled. These small waves raised by the 
evening wind are as remote from storm as the smooth 
reflecting surface. Though it is now dark, the wind still 
blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and 15 
some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose 
is never complete. The wildest animals do not repose, 
but seek their prey now ; the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, 
now roam the fields and woods without fear. They are 
Nature's watchmen, — Hnks which connect the days of 20 
animated hfe. 

When I return to my house I find that visitors have 
been there and left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, 
or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow 
walnut leaf or a chip. They who come rarely to the woods 25 
take some little piece of the forest into their hands to play 
K 129 



130 WALL EN 

with by the way, which they leave, either intentionally 
or accidentally. One has peeled a willow wand, woven 
it into a ring, and dropped it on my table. I could al- 
ways tell if visitors had called in my absence, either 
5 by the bended twigs or grass, or the print of their shoes, 
and generally of what sex or age or quality they were by 
some slight trace left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch of 
grass plucked and thrown away, even as far off as the rail- 
road, half a mile distant, or by the lingering odor of a cigar 

lo or pipe. Nay, I was frequently notified of the passage of 
a traveller along the highway sixty rods off by the scent 
of his pipe. 

There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our 
horizon is never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is 

15 not just at our door, nor the pond, but somewhat is always 
clearing, familiar and worn by us, appropriated and fenced 
in some way, and reclaimed from Nature. For what reason 
have I this vast range and circuit, some square miles of unfre- 
quented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men ? 

20 My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is 
visible from any place but the hill-tops within half a mile 
of my own. I have my horizon bounded by woods all 
to myself ; a distant view of the railroad where it touches 
the pond on the one hand, and of the fence which skirts the 

25 woodland road on the other. But for the most part it is 
as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as much 
Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my 
own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to my- 
self. At night there was never a traveller passed my 

30 house, or knocked at my door, more than if I were the first 
or last man ; unless it were in the spring, when at long 
intervals some came from the village to fish for pouts, ° — 
they plainly fished much more in the Walden Pond of their 



SOLITUDE 131 

own natures, and baited their books with darkness, — 
but they soon retreated, usually with light baskets, and 
left ''the world to darkness and to me," ° and the black 
kernel of the night was never profaned by any human 
neighborhood. I believe that men are generally still a 5 
httle afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, 
and Christianity and candles have been introduced. 

Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and 
tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be 
found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope 10 
and most melancholy man. There can be no very black 
melancholy to him who hves in the midst of Nature and 
has his senses still. There was never yet such a storm 
but it was ^olian music° to a healthy and innocent ear. 
Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a is 
vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the sea- 
sons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. 
The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in 
the house to-day is not drear and melancholy, but good for 
me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is far 20 
more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so 
long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy 
the potatoes in the lowlands, it would still be good for the 
grass, on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it 
would be good for me. Sometimes, when I compare my- 25 
self with other men, it seems as if I were more favored 
by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am 
conscious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their 
hands which my fellows have not, and were especially 
guided and guarded. I do not flatter myself, but if it be 30 
possible they flatter me. I have never felt lonesome, 
or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, 
and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when. 



132 WALDEN 

for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man 
was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone 
was something unpleasant. But I was at the same 
time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed 

5 to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain 
while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible 
of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very 
pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around 
my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at 

lo once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied 
advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I 
have never thought of them since. Every little pine 
needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and be- 
friended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the pres- 

15 ence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which 
we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that 
the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person 
nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be 
strange to me again. — 

20 " Mourning untimely consumes the sad ; 

Few are their days in the land of the living, 
Beautiful daughter of Toscar." 

Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain- 
storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house 

25 for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their 
ceaseless roar and pelting ; when an early twilight ushered 
in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take 
root and unfold themselves. In those driving northeast 
rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids 

30 stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the 
deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which 
was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In 



SOLITUDE 133 

one heavy thunder-shower the Hghtning struck a large 
pitch-pine across the pond, making a very conspicuous 
and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom, 
an inch or more deep, and four or five inches wide, as you 
would groove a walking-stick. I passed it again the other 5 
day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding 
that mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and 
resistless bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight 
years ago. Men frequently say to me, "I should think 
you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer 10 
to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially." 
I am tempted to reply to such, — This whole earth which 
we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think 
you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, 
the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our 15 
instruments ? Why should I feel lonely ? is not our planet 
in the Milky Way ? This which you put seems to me not 
to be the most important question. What sort of space 
is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes 
him solitary ? I have found that no exertion of the legs 20 
can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What 
do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men 
surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting- 
house, the schoolhouse, the grocery. Beacon Hill,° or the 
Five Points, ° where men most congregate, but to the 25 
perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience 
we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near 
the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This 
will vary with different natures, but this is the place where 
a wise man will dig his cellar. ... I one evening overtook 30 
one of my townsmen, who has accumulated what is called 
"a, handsome property," — though I never got a fair 
view of it, — on the Walden road, driving a pair of cattle 



134 WALDEN 

to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my 
mind to give up so many of the comforts of Hfe. I an- 
swered that I was very sure I Hked it passably well; I 
was not joking. And so I went home to my bed, and left 
5 him to pick his way through the darkness and the mud to 
Brighton, ° — or Brighttown, — which place he would 
reach some time in the morning. 

Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead 
man makes indifferent all times and places. The place 

lo where that may occur is always the same, and indescrib- 
ably pleasant to all our senses. For the most part we 
allow only outl3nng and transient circumstances to make 
our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distrac- 
tion. Nearest to all things is that power which fashions 

15 their being. Next to us the grandest laws are continually 
being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom 
we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but 
the workman whose work we are. 

"How vast and profound is the influence of the sub- 

20 tile powers of Heaven and of Earth ! " 

*'We seek to perceive them, and we do not see them; 
we seek to hear them, and we do not hear them ; identified 
with the substance of things, they cannot be separated 
from them." 

25 "They cause that in all the universe men purify and 
sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in their holi- 
day garments to offer sacrifices and oblations to their 
ancestors. It is an ocean of subtile intelligences. They 
are everywhere, above us, on our left, on our right ; they 

30 environ us on all sides." 

We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a 
httle interesting to me. Can we not do witliout the 
society of our gossips a little while under these circum- 



SOLITUDE 135 

stances, — have our own thoughts to cheer us ? Confu- 
cius says truly, " Virtue does not remain as an abandoned 
orphan ; it must of necessity have neighbors." 

With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane 
sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand s 
aloof from actions and their consequences ; and all things, 
good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly 
involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the 
stream, or Indra° in the sky looking down on it. I may be 
affected by a theatrical exhibition ; on the other hand, I lo 
may not be affected by an actual event which appears to 
concern me much more. I only know myself as a human 
entity ; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections ; 
and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can 
stand as remote from myself as from another. However 15 
intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and 
criticism of a part of me, which, as it w^ere, is not a part of 
me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note 
of it; and that is no more I than it is you. When the 
play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator 20 
goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagi- 
nation only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness 
may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes 

I find it wholesome to be alone° the greater part of the 
time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon weari- 25 
some and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found 
the companion that was so companionable as solitude. 
We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad 
among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man 
thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he 30 
will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that 
intervene between a man and his fellows. The really dili- 
gent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge 



136 WALDEN 

College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The 
farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, 
hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is 
employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot 
5 sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, 
but must be where he can ''see the folks," and recreate, 
and as he thinks remunerate, himself for his day's solitude ; 
and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the 
house all night and most of the day without ennui and " the 

lo blues " ; but he does not realize that the student, though 
in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his 
woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same 
recreation and society that the latter does, though it may 
be a more condensed form of it. 

IS Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short 
intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value 
for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, 
and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese 
that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of 

20 rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this fre- 
quent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open 
war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, ° 
and about the fireside every night ; we live thick and are 
in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I 

25 think that we thus lose some respect for one another. 
Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important 
and hearty communications. Consider the girls in a fac- 
tory, — never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would 
be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square 

30 mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his 
skin, that we should touch him. 

I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of 
famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness 



SOLITUDE 137 

was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing 
to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded 
him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to 
bodily and mental health and strength, we may be con- 
tinually cheered by a like but more normal and natural s 
society, and come to know that we are never alone. 

I have a great deal of company in my house ; especially 
in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few 
comparisons, that some one may convey an idea of my 
situation. I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond lo 
that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What 
company has that lonely lake, I pray ? And yet it has not 
the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint 
of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, 
when there sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock 15 
sun. God is alone, — but the devil, he is far from being 
alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. 
I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a 
pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a humble- 
bee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, ° or a 20 
weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an 
April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new 
house. 

I have occasional visits" in the long winter evenings, 
when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, 25 
from an old settler and original proprietor, who is reported 
to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it 
with pine woods ; who tells me stories of old time and of 
new eternity ; and between us we manage to pass a cheer- 
ful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things, 30 
even without apples or cider, — a most wise and humorous 
friend, whom I love much, who keeps himself more secret 
than ever did Goffe or Whalley° ; and though he is thought 



138 WALDEN 

to be dead, none can show where he is buried. An elderly 
dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most 
persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll some- 
times gathering simples° and listening to her fables ; for she 
5 has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memory runs 
back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the origi- 
nal of every fable, and on what fact every one is founded, 
for the incidents occurred when she was young. A ruddy 
and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and sea- 

lo sons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet. 

The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature, 
— of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter, — 
such health, such cheer, they afford forever ! and such 
sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature 

15 would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and 
the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, 
and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in 
midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. 
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not 

20 partly leaves and vegetable mould myself ? 

What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, con- 
tented? Not my or thy great-grandfather's, but our 
great-grandmother Nature's universal, vegetable, botanic 
medicines, by which she has kept herself young always, 

25 outlived so many old Parrs° in her day, and fed her 
health with their decayed fatness. For my panacea, 
instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped 
from x\cheron°and the Dead Sea,° which come out of those 
long shallow black-schooner looking wagons which we 

30 sometimes see made to carry bottles, let me have a draught 
of undiluted morning air. Morning air ! If men will 
not drink of this at the fountain-head of the day, why, 
then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops. 



SOLITUDE 139 

for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription 
ticket to morning time in this world. But remember, it 
will not keep quite till noonday even in the coolest cellar, 
but drive out the stopples long ere that and follow west- 
ward the steps of Aurora. I am no worshipper of Hygeia,° 5 
who was the daughter of that old herb-doctor 7Esculapius,° 
and who is represented on monuments holding a serpent 
in one hand, and in the other a cup out of which the ser- 
pent sometimes drinks ; but rather of Hebe, cupbearer to 
Jupiter, who was the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, ° ic 
and who had the power of restoring gods and men to the 
vigor of youth. She was probably the only thoroughly 
sound-conditioned, healthy, and robust young lady that 
ever walked the globe, and wherever she came it was spring. 



VISITORS 

I THINK that I love society as much as most, and am 
ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the 
time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. 
I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the 
5 sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called 
me thither. 

I had three chairs in my house ; one for solitude, two 
for friendship, three for society. When visitors came in 
larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third 

lo chair for them all, but they generally economized the room 
by standing up. It is surprising how many great men and 
women a small house will contain. I have had twenty- 
five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once, under my 
roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we 

15 had come very near to one another. Many of our houses, 
both public and private, with their almost innumerable 
apartments, their huge halls and their cellars for the 
storage of wines and other munitions of peace, appear to 
me extravagantly large for their inhabitants. They are 

20 so vast and magnificent that the latter seem to be only 
vermin which infest them. I am surprised when the her- 
ald blows his summons before some Tremont or Astor or 
Middlesex House, ° to see come creeping out over the 
piazza for all inhabitants a ridiculous mouse, which soon 

25 again slinks into some hole in the pavement. 

One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small 
140 



VISITORS . 141 

a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance 
from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts 
in big words. You want room for your thoughts to get 
into saihng trim and run a course or two before they make 
their port. The bullet of your thought must have over- 5 
come its lateral and ricochet motion° and fallen into its 
last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the 
hearer, else it may plough out again through the side of his 
head. Also, our sentences wanted room to unfold and 
form their columns in the interval. Individuals, like na- 10 
tions, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, 
even a considerable neutral ground, between them. I 
have found it a singular luxur}^ to talk across the pond to a 
companion on the opposite side. In my house we were so 
near that we could not begin to hear, — we could not speak 15 
low enough to be heard ; as when you throw two stones 
into calm water so near that they break each other's 
undulations. If we are merely loquacious and loud talkers, 
then we can afford to stand very near together, cheek by 
jowl, and feel each other's breath; but if we speak re- 20 
servedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, 
that all animal heat and moisture may have a chance 
to evaporate. If we would enjoy the most intimate society 
with that in each of us which is without, or above, being 
spoken to, we must not only be silent, but commonly so 25 
far apart bodily that we cannot possibly hear each other's 
voice in any case. Referred to this standard, speech is for 
the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but 
there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have 
to shout. As the conversation began to assume a loftier 30 
and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs farther 
apart till they touched the wall in opposite corners, and 
then commonly there was not room enough. 



142 . WALDEN 

My "best" room, however, my withdrawing room, 
always ready for company, on whose carpet the sun rarely 
fell, was the pine, wood behind my house. Thither in 
summer days, when distinguished guests came, I took 
5 them, and a priceless domestic swept the floor and dusted 
the furniture and kept the things in order. 

If one guest came he sometimes partook of my frugal 
meal, and it was no interruption to conversation to be 
stirring a hasty-pudding, or watching the rising and 

lo maturing of a loaf of bread in the ashes, in the meanwhile. 
But if twenty came and sat in my house there was nothing 
said about dinner, though there might be bread enough 
for two, more than if ° eating were a forsaken habit ; but 
we naturally practised abstinence; and this was never 

15 felt to be an offence against hospitality, but the most proper 
and considerate course. The waste and decay of physical 
life, which so often needs repair, seemed miraculously re- 
tarded in such a case, and the vital vigor stood its ground. 
I could entertain thus a thousand as well as twenty ; and if 

20 any ever went away disappointed or hungry from my 
house when they found me at home, they may depend 
upon it that I sympathized with them at least. So easy 
is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish 
new and better customs in the place of the old. You need 

25 not rest your reputation on the dinners you give. For 
my own part, I was never so effectually deterred from fre- 
quenting a man's house, by any kind of Cerberus° what- 
ever, as by the parade one made about dining me, which 
I took to be a very polite and roundabout hint never to 

30 trouble him so again. I think I shall never revisit those 
scenes. I should be proud to have for the motto of my 
cabin those lines of Spenser° which one of my visitors 
inscribed on a yellow walnut leaf for a card ; — 



VISITORS 143 

"Arrived there, the little house they fill, 
Ne looke for entertainment where none was ; 
Rest is their feast, and all things at their will : 
The noblest mind the best contentment has."° 

When Winslow,° afterward governor of the Pljmiouth 5 
Colony, went with a companion on a visit of ceremony to 
Massasoit on foot through the woods, and arrived tired and 
hungry at his lodge, they were well received by the king, 
but nothing was said about eating that day. When the 
night arrived, to quote their own words, — "He laid us on 10 
the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end and 
we at the other, it being only plank, laid a foot from the 
ground, and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his 
chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us; 
so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our 15 
journey." At one o'clock the next day Massasoit 
"brought two fishes that he had shot," about thrice as big 
as a bream ; "these being boiled, there were at least forty 
looked for a share in them. The most ate of them. This 
meal only we had in two nights and a day ; and had not 20 
one of us bought a partridge, we had taken our journey 
fasting." Fearing that they would be light-headed for 
want of food and also sleep, owing to "the savages' barba- 
rous singing (for they used to sing themselves asleep)," 
and that they might get home while they had strength to 25 
travel, they departed. As for lodging, it is true they 
were but poorly entertained, though what they found an in- 
convenience was no doubt intended for an honor ; but as 
far as eating was concerned, I do not see how the Indians 
could have done better. They had nothing to eat them- 30 
selves, and they were wiser than to think that apologies 
could supply the place of food to their guests ; so they drew 
their belts tighter and said nothing about it . Another time 



144 WALDEN 

when Winslow visited them, it being a season of plenty 
with them, there was no deficiency in this respect. 

As for men, they will hardly fail one anywhere. I had 
more visitors while I lived in the woods than at any other 

5 period of my life ; I mean that I had some. I met several 
there under more favorable circumstances than I could 
anywhere else. But fewer came to see me upon trivial 
business. In this respect, my company was winnowed 
by my mere distance from town. I had withdrawn so 

lo far within the great ocean of solitude, into which the rivers 
of society empty, that for the most part, so far as my needs 
were concerned, only the finest sediment was deposited 
around me. Beside, there were wafted to me evidences of 
unexplored and uncultivated continents on the other 

15 side. 

Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true 
Homeric or Paphlagonian man, — he had so suitable and 
poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print it here, — 
a Canadian, ° a wood-chopper and post-maker, who can 

20 hole fifty posts in a day, who made his last supper on a 
woodchuck which his dog caught. He, too, has heard of 
Homer, and, "if it were not for books,'' would "not know 
what to do rainy days," though perhaps he has not read 
one wholly through for many rainy seasons. Some priest 

25 who could pronounce the Greek itself taught him to read 
his verse in the testament in. his native parish far away ; 
and now I must translate to him, while he holds the book, 
Achilles' reproof to Patroclus for his sad countenance. — 
" Why are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young girl ? " — 

30 " Or have you alone heard some news from Phthia ? 
They say that Menoetius lives yet, son of Actor, 
And Peleus lives, son of iEacus, among the Myrmidons, 
Either of whom having died, we should greatly grieve. "° 



VISITORS 145 

He says, "That's good." He has a great bundle of white- 
oak bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered this 
Sunday morning. "I suppose there's no harm in going 
after such a thing to-day," says he. To him Homer was 
a great writer, though what his writing was about he did 5 
not know. A more simple and natural man it would be 
hard to find. Vice and disease, which cast such a sombre 
moral hue over the world, seemed to have hardly any 
existence for him. He was about twenty-eight years old, 
and had left Canada and his father's house a dozen years 10 
before to work in the States, and earn money to buy a 
farm with at last, perhaps in his native country. He was 
cast in the coarsest mould ; a stout but sluggish body, yet 
gracefully carried, with a thick sunburnt neck, dark 
bushy hair, and dull sleepy blue eyes, which were occasion- 15 
ally lit up with expression. He wore a flat gray cloth cap, 
a dingy wool-colored great-coat, and cowhide boots. He 
was a great consumer of meat, usually carrying his dinner 
to his work a couple of miles past my house, — for he 
chopped all summer, — in a tin pail ; cold meats, often 20 
cold woodchucks, and coffee in a stone bottle which 
dangled by a string from his belt ; and sometimes he offered 
me a drink. He came along early, crossing my bean-field, 
though without anxiety or haste to get to his work, such as 
Yankees exhibit. He wasn't a-going to hurt himself. 25 
He didn't care if he only earned his board. Frequently 
he would leave his dinner in the bushes, when his dog had 
caught a woodchuck by the way, and go back a mile and 
a half to dress it and leave it in the cellar of the house 
where he boarded, after deliberating first for half an hour 30 
whether he could not sink it in the pond safely till 
nightfall, — loving to dwell long upon these themes. 
He would say, as he went by in the morning, "How thick 



146 WALDEN 

the pigeons are ! If working every day were not my trade, 
I could get all the meat I should want by hunting, — 
pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits, partridges, — by gosh° ! 
I could get all I should want for a week in one day." 
5 He was a skilful chopper, and indulged in some flour- 
ishes and ornament in his art. He cut his trees level and 
close to the ground, that the sprouts which came up after- 
ward might be more vigorous and a sled might slide over 
the stumps ; and instead of leaving a whole tree to support 

lo his corded wood, he would pare it away to a slender stake 
or splinter which you could break off with your hand at last. 
He interested me because he was so quiet and solitary 
and so happy withal ; a well of good humor and content- 
ment which overflowed at his eyes. His mirth was without 

15 alloy. Sometimes I saw him at his work in the woods, 
felling trees, and he would greet me with a laugh of inex- 
pressible satisfaction, and a salutation in Canadian French, 
though he spoke English as well. When I approached him 
he would suspend his work, and with half-suppressed mirth 

20 lie along the trunk of a pine which he had felled, and, peeling 
off the inner bark, roll it up into a ball and chew it while 
he laughed and talked. Such an exuberance of animal 
spirits had he that he sometimes tumbled down and rolled 
on the ground with laughter at anything which made him 

25 think and tickled him. Looking around upon the trees 
he would exclaim, — "By George! I can enjoy myself 
well enough here chopping; I want no better sport.'' 
Sometimes, when at leisure, he amused himself all day in 
the woods with a pocket pistol, firing salutes to himself 

30 at regular intervals as he walked. In the winter he had 
a fire by which at noon he warmed his coffee in a kettle ; 
and as he sat on a log to eat his dinner the chickadees would 
sometimes come round and alight on his arm and peck at 



VISITORS 147 

the potato in his fingers; and he said that he "hked to 
have the httle /e^Zers about him." ^ 

In him the animal man chiefly was developed. In 
physical endurance and contentment he was cousin to 
the pine and the rock. I asked him once if he was not 5 
sometimes tired at night, after working all day; and he 
answered, with a sincere and serious look, ''Gorrappit, 
I never was tired in my life." But the intellectual and 
what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in 
an infant. He had been instructed only in that innocent 10 
and ineffectual way in which the Catholic priests teach the 
aborigines, by which the pupil is never educated to the 
degree of consciousness, but only to the degree of trust and 
reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child. 
When Nature made him, she gave him a strong body and 15 
contentment for his portion, and propped him on every 
side with reverence and reliance, that he might live out his 
threescore years and ten a child. He was so genuine and 
unsophisticated that no introduction would serve to intro- 
duce him, more than if you introduced a woodchuck to 20 
your neighbor. He had got to find him out as you did. 
He would not play any part. Men paid him wages for 
work, and so helped to feed and clothe him ; but he never 
exchanged. opinions with them. He was so simply and 
naturally humble — if he can be called humble who never 25 
aspires — that humihty was no distinct quality in him, 
nor could he conceive of it. Wiser men were demigods to 
him. If you told him that such a one was coming, he did 
as if he thought that anything so grand would expect 
nothing of himself, but take all the responsibility on itself, 30 
and let him be forgotten still. He never heard the sound 
of praise. He particularly reverenced the writer and the 
preacher. Their performances were miracles. When I 



148 WALDEN 

told him that I wrote considerably, he thought for a long 
time that it was nierely the handwriting which I meant, 
for he could write a remarkably good hand himself. I 
sometimes found the name of his native parish handsomely 
5 written in the snow by the highway, with the proper French 
accent, and knew that he had passed. I asked him if he 
ever wished to write his thoughts. He said that he had 
read and written letters for those who could not, but he 
never tried to write thoughts, — no, he could not, he 

lo could not tell what to put first, it would kill him, and then 
there was spelling to be attended to at the same time ! 

I heard that a distinguished wise man and reformer 
asked him if he did not want the world to be changed; 
but he answered with a chuckle of surprise in his Canadian 

15 accent, not knowing that the question had ever been 
entertained before, "No, I like it well enough." It 
would have suggested many things to a philosopher to 
have dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared to 
know nothing of things in general ; yet I sometimes saw 

20 in him a man whom I had not seen before, and I did not 
know whether he was as wise as Shakespeare or as simply 
ignorant as a child, whether to suspect him of a fine poetic 
consciousness or of stupidity. A townsman told me 
that when he met him sauntering through the village 

25 in his small close-fitting cap, and whistling to himself, he 
reminded him of a prince in disguise. 

His only books were an almanac and an arithmetic, 
in which last he was considerably expert. The former 
was a sort of cyclopaedia to him, which he supposed to con- 

30 tain an abstract of human knowledge, as indeed it does 
to a considerable extent. I loved to sound him on the 
various reforms of the day, and he never failed to look at 
them in the most simple and practical light. He had 



VISITORS 149 

never heard of such things before. Could he do without 
factories? I asked. He had worn the home-made Ver- 
mont gray, he said, and that was good. Could he dispense 
v/ith tea and coffee ? Did this country afford any beverage 
beside water ? He had soaked hemlock leaves in water s 
and drank it, and thought that was better than water in 
warm weather. When I asked him if he could do without 
money, he showed the convenience of money in such a 
way as to suggest and coincide with the most philosophical 
accounts of the origin of this institution, and the very lo 
derivation of the word pecunia° If an ox were his 
property, and he wished to get needles and thread at the 
store, he thought it would be inconvenient and impossible 
soon to go on mortgaging some portion of the creature each 
time to that amount. He could defend many institu- 15 
tions better than any philosopher, because, in describing 
them as they concerned him, he gave the true reason for 
their prevalence, and speculation had not suggested to 
him any other. At another time, hearing Plato's defini- 
tion of a man, — a biped without feathers, — and that one 20 
exhibited a cock plucked and called it Plato's man,° 
he thought it an important difference that the knees bent 
the wrong way. He would sometimes exclaim, "How I 
love to talk ! By George, I could talk all day ! " I asked 
him once, when I had not seen him for many months, if 25 
he had got a new idea this summer. "Good Lord," said 
he, "el man that has to work as I do, if he does not forget 
the ideas he has had, he will do well. Maybe the man you 
hoe with is inclined to race; then, by gorry, your mind 
must be there; you think of weeds." He would some- 30 
times ask me first on such occasions, if I had made any 
improvement. One winter day I asked him if he was 
always satisfied with himself, wishing to suggest a substi- 



150 WALDEN 

tute within him for the priest without, and some higher 
motive for Hving. ''Satisfied !" said he; "some men are 
satisfied with one thing, and some with another. One 
man, perhaps, if he has got enough, will be satisfied to sit 

5 all day with his back to the fire and his belly to the table, 
by George ! " Yet I never, by any manoeuvring, could 
get him to take the spiritual view of things ; the highest 
that he appeared to conceive of was a simple expediency, 
such as you might expect an animal to appreciate; and 

lo this, practically, is true of most men. If I suggested any 

improvement in his mode of life, he merely answered, 

without expressing any regret, that it was too late. Yet 

he thoroughly believed in honesty and the hke virtues. 

There was a certain positive originality, however 

15 slight, to be detected in him, and I occasionally observed 
that he was thinking for himself and expressing his own 
opinion, a phenomenon so rare that I would any day 
walk ten miles to observe it, and it amounted to the re- 
origination of many of the institutions of society. Though 

20 he hesitated, and perhaps failed to express himself dis- 
tinctly, he always had a presentable thought behind. 
Yet his thinking was so primitive and immersed in his 
animal life, that, though more promising than a merely 
learned man's, it rarely ripened to anything which can be 

25 reported. He suggested that there might be men of genius 
in the lowest grades of life, however permanently humble 
and illiterate, who take their own view always, or do not 
pretend to see at all ; who are as bottomless even as Walden 
Pond was thought to be, though they may be dark and 

30 muddy. 

Many a traveller came out of his way to see me and the 
inside of my house, and, as an excuse for calling, asked 



VISITORS 151 

for a glass of water. I told them that I drank at the pond, 
and pointed thither, offering to lend them a dipper. Far 
off as I lived, I was not exempted from that annual 
visitation which occurs, methinks, about the first of April, 
when everybody is on the move ; and I had my share of 5 
good luck, though there were some curious specimens 
among my visitors. Half-witted men from the almshouse 
and elsewhere came to see me ; but I endeavored to make 
them exercise all the wit they had, and make their confes- 
sions to me ; in such cases making wit the theme of our lo 
conversation; and so was compensated. Indeed, I found 
some of them to be wiser than the so-called overseers of 
the poor and selectmen of the town, and thought it was 
time that the tables were turned. With respect to wit, 
I learned that there was not much difference between the 15 
half and the whole. One day, in particular, an inoffensive, 
simple-minded pauper, whom with others I had often 
seen used as fencing stuff, standing or sitting on a bushel 
in the fields to keep cattle and himself from straying, 
visited me, and expressed a wish to five as I did. He told 20 
me, with the utmost simpHcity and truth, quite superior, 
or rather inferior, to an>-t,hing that is called humilit}^, 
that he was "deficient in intellect.'^ These were his 
words. The Lord had made him so, yet he supposed the 
Lord cared as much for him as for another. "I have 25 
always been so," said he, "from my childhood ; I never had 
much mind ; I was not like other children ; I am weak in 
the head. It was the Lord's will, I suppose." And there 
he was to prove the truth of his words. He was a meta- 
physical puzzle to me. I have rarely met a fellow-man 30 
on such promising ground, — it was so simple and sincere 
and so true, all that he said. And, true enough, in propor- 
tion as he appeared to humble himself was he exalted. 



152 WALDEN 

I did not know at first but it was the result of a wise policy. 
It seemed that from such a basis of truth and frankness 
as the poor weak-headed pauper had laid, our intercourse 
might go forward to something better than the inter- 
5 course of sages. 

I had some guests from those not reckoned commonly 
among the town's poor, but who should be; who are 
among the world's poor, at any rate; guests who appeal, 
not to your hospitality but to your hospitalality ; who 

lo earnestly wish to be helped, and preface their appeal with 
the information that they are resolved, for one thing, 
never to help themselves. I require of a visitor that he 
be not actually starving, though he may have the very best 
appetite in the world, however he got it. Objects of 

15 charity are not guests. Men who did not know w^hen 
their visit had terminated, though I w^ent about my busi- 
ness again, answering them from greater and greater re- 
moteness. Men of almost every degree of wit called on 
me in the migrating season. Some who had more wits 

20 than they knew what to do with ; runaway slaves with 
plantation manners, who listened from time to time, like 
the fox in the fable, as if they -heard the hounds a-baying 
on their track, and looked at me beseechingly, as much 
as to say, — 

25 "O Christian, will you send me back? " 

One real runaway slave, among the rest, whom I helped 
to forward toward the north star. Men of one idea, like 
a hen with one chicken, and that a duckling; men of a 
thousand ideas, and unkempt heads, like those hens which 
30 are made to take charge of a hundred chickens, all in pur- 
suit of one bug, a score of them lost in every morning 's 
dew — and become frizzled and mangy in consequence ; 



VISITOJ^S 153 

men of ideas instead of legs, a sort of intellectual centipede 
that made you crawl all over. One man proposed a 
book in which visitors should write their names, as at 
the White Mountains ; but, alas ! I have too good a mem- 
ory to make that necessary . 5 

I could not but notice some of the peculiarities of my 
visitors. Girls and boys and young women generally 
seemed glad to be in the woods. They looked in the pond 
and at the flowers, and improved their time. Men of 
business, even farmers, thought only of solitude and em- lo 
ployment, and of the great distance at which I dwelt 
from something or other; and though they said that 
they loved a ramble in the woods occasionally, it was 
obvious that they did not. Restless committed ° men, 
whose time was all taken up in getting a living or keeping 15 
it ; ministers who spoke of God as if they enjoyed a monop- 
oly of the subject, who could not bear all kinds of opin- 
ions; doctors, lawyers, uneasy housekeepers who pried 
into my cupboard and bed when I was out — how came 

Mrs. to know that my sheets were not as clean as 20 

hers ? — young men who had ceased to be young, and had 
concluded that it was safest to follow the beaten track of 
the professions — all these generally said that it was not 
possible to do so much good in my position. A}^ ! there 
was the rub. The old and infirm and the timid, of what- 25 
ever age or sex, thought most of sickness, and sudden 
accident and death; to them life seemed full of danger, 
— what danger is there if you don't think of any ? — and 
they thought that a prudent man would carefully select 
the safest position, where Dr. B. might be on hand at a 30 
moment's warning. To them the village was literally 
a com-munity° a league for mutual defence, and you 
would suppose that they would not go a-huckleberrying 



154 WALDEN 

without a medicine chest. The amount of it is, if a man 
is ahve, there is always danger that he may die, though 
the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he 
is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many 
5 risks as he runs. Finally, there were the self-styled reform- 
ers, the greatest bores of all, who thought that I was 
forever singing, — 

This is the house that I built; 

This is the man that lives in the house that I built; 

lo but they did not know that the third hne was, — 

These are the folks that worry the man 
That lives in the house that I built. 

I did not fear the hen-harriers, for I kept no chickens; 
but I feared the men-harriers rather. 

15 I had more cheering visitors than the last. Children 
come a-berrying, railroad men taking a Sunday morning 
walk in clean shirts, fishermen and hunters, poets and 
philosophers, in short, all honest pilgrims, who came 
out to the woods for freedom's sake, and really left the 

20 village behind, I was ready to greet with, — "Welcome, 
Englishmen ! welcome. Englishmen ! " for I had had 
communication° with that race. 



THE BEAN-FIELD 

Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added 
together, was seven miles already planted, were im- 
patient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably 
before the latest were in the ground ; indeed they were 
not easily to be put off. What was the meaning of this 5 
so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, 
I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, though 
so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the 
earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus. ° But why 
should I raise them ? Only Heaven knows. This was 10 
my curious labor all summer, — to make this portion of 
the earth's surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, 
blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild 
fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse. 
What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish 15 
them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them ; 
and this is my day's work. It is a fine broad leaf to look 
on. My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water 
this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which 
for the most part is lean and effete. ° My enemies are 20 
worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks. The last 
have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean. But 
what right had I to oust johnswort and the rest, and 
break up their ancient herb garden? Soon, however, 
the remaining beans will be too tough for them, and go 25 
forward to meet new foes. 

155 



156 WALDEN 

When I was four years old, as I well remember, I was 
brought from Boston to this my native town, through 
these very woods and this field, to the pond. It is one of 
the oldest scenes stamped on my memory. And now 
5 to-night my flute° has waked the echoes over that very 
water. The pines still stand here older than I; or, if 
some have fallen, I have cooked my supper with their 
stumps, and a new growth is rising all around, preparing 
another aspect for new infant eyes. Almost the same 

lo johnswort springs from the same perennial root in this 
pasture, and even I have at length helped to clothe that 
fabulous landscape of my infant dreams, and one of the 
results of my presence and influence is seen in these bean 
leaves, corn blades, and potato vines. 

15 I planted about two acres and a half of upland; and 
as it was only about fifteen years since the land was 
cleared, and I myself had got out two or three cords of 
stumps, I did not give it any manure ; but in the course 
of the summer it appeared by the arrow-heads ° which 

20 I turned up in hoeing, that an extinct nation had anciently 
dwelt here and planted corn and beans ere white men 
came to clear the land, and so, to some extent, had ex- 
hausted the soil for this very crop. 

Before yet any woodchuck or squirrel had run across 

25 the road, or the sun had got above the shrub-oaks, while 
all the dew was on, though the farmers warned me against 
it, — I would advise you to do all your work if possible 
while the dew is on, — I began to level the ranks of 
haughty weeds in my bean-field and throw dust upon 

30 their heads. ° Early in the morning I worked barefooted, 
dabbling like a plastic artist in the dewy and crumbling 
sand, but later in the day the sun blistered my feet. 
There the sun lighted me to hoe beans, pacing slowly 



THE BEAN-FIELD 157 

backward and forward over that yellow gravelly upland, 
between the long green rows, fifteen rods, the one end 
terminating in a shrub-oak copse where I could rest in the 
shade, the other in a blackberry field where the green 
berries deepened their tints by the time I had made s 
another bout. Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil 
about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which 
I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer 
thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in worm- 
wood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say lo 
beans instead of grass, — this was my daily work. As I 
had little aid from horses or cattle, or hired men or boys, 
or improved implements of husbandry, I was much slower, 
and became much more intimate with my beans than 
usual. But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the 15 
verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of 
idleness. It has a constant and imperishable moral, and 
to the scholar it yields a classic result. A very agricola 
laboriosus was I to travellers bound westward through 
Lincoln and Wayland to nobody knows where; they 20 
sitting at their ease in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins 
loosely hanging in festoons ; I the home-staying, laborious 
native of the soil. But soon my homestead was out of 
their sight and thought. It was the only open and cul- 
tivated field for a great distance on either side of the 25 
road; so they made the most of it; and sometimes the 
man in the field heard more of travellers' gossip and 
comment than was meant for his ear: ''Beans so late! 
peas so late ! " — for I continued to plant when others had 
begun to hoe, — the ministerial husbandman had not sus- 30 
pected it. " Corn, my boy, for fodder ; corn for fodder." 
"Does he live there?" asks the black bonnet of the gray 
coat : and the hard-featured farmer reins up his grateful 



158 WALDEN 

dobbin ° to inquire what you are doing where he sees no 
manure in the furrow, and recommends a httle chip dirt, 
or any httle waste stuff, or it may be ashes or plaster. 
But here were two acres and a half of furrows and only a 
5 hoe for a cart and two hands to draw it, — there being 
an aversion to other carts and horses, — and chip dirt 
far away. Fellow-travellers as they rattled by compared 
it aloud with the fields which they had passed, so that I 
came to know how I stood in the agricultural world. This 

lo was one field not in Mr. Coleman's° report. And, by the 
way, who estimates the value of the crop which Nature 
yields in the still wilder fields unimproved by man ? The 
crop of English hay is carefully weighed, the moisture 
calculated, the silicates and the potash; but in all dells 

15 and pond holes in the woods and pastures and swamps 
grows a rich and various crop only unreaped by man. 
Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild 
and cultivated fields ; as some states are civilized, and others 
half-civihzed, and others savage or barbarous, so my 

20 field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated 
field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their 
wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe 
played the Ranz cles Vaches° for them. 

Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, sings 

25 the brown- thrasher — or red mavis, as some love to call 
him — all the morning, glad of your society, that would 
find out another farmer's field if yours were not here. 
While you are planting the seed, he cries, — "Drop it, 
drop it, — cover it up, cover it up, — pull it up, pull it 

30 up, pull it up." But this was not corn, and so it was 
safe from such enemies as he. You may wonder what 
his rigmarole, his amateur Paganini° performances on 
one string or on twenty, have to do with your planting. 



THE BEAN-FIELD 159 

and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. It was a 
cheap sort of top dressing in which I had entire faith. 

As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, 
I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in pri- 
meval years lived under these heavens, and their smalls 
implements of war and hunting were brought to the light 
of this modern day. They lay mingled with other 
natural stones, some of which bore the marks of having 
been burned by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and 
also bits of pottery and glass brought hither by the recent lo 
cultivators of the soil. When my hoe tinkled against the 
stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and 
was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an 
instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans 
that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered 15 
with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my 
acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the 
oratorios. The night-hawk circled overhead in the sunny 
afternoons — for I sometimes made a day of it — like a 
mote in the eye, or in heaven's eye, falling from time to 20 
time with a swoop and a sound as if the heavens were 
rent, torn at last to very rags and tatters, and yet a 
seamless cope remained ; small imps that fill the air and 
lay their eggs on the ground on bare sand or rocks on the 
tops of hills, where few have found them; graceful and 25 
slender like ripples caught up from the pond, as leaves 
are raised by the wind to float in the heavens; such 
kindredship is in Nature. The hawk is aerial brother of 
the wave which he sails over and surveys, those in perfect 
air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged 30 
pinions of the sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of 
hen-hawks circling high in the sky, alternately soaring and 
descending, approaching and . leaving one another, as if 



160 WALDEN 

they were the embodiment of my own thoughts. Or 
I was attracted by the passage of wild pigeons from this 
wood to that, with a sHght quivering winnowing sound 
and carrier haste ; or from under a rotten- stump my hoe 
5 turned up a sluggish, portentous, and outlandish spotted 
salamander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile, yet our contem- 
porary. When I paused to lean on my hoe, these sounds 
and sights I heard and saw anjrvvhere in the row, a part 
of the inexhaustible entertainment which the country 

lo offers. 

On gala days the town fires its great guns, which echo 
like popguns to these woods, and some waifs of martial 
music occasionally penetrate thus far. To me, away 
there in my bean-field at the other end of the town, the 

15 big guns sounded as if a puff-ball had burst ; and when 
there was a military turnout of which I was ignorant, 
I have sometimes had a vague sense all the day of some 
sort of itching and disease in the horizon, as if some erup- 
tion would break out there soon, either scarlatina or 

20 canker-rash, until at length some more favorable puff of 
wind, making haste over the fields and up the Wayland 
road, brought me information of the " trainers." ° It 
seemed by the distant hum as if somebody's bees had 
swarmed, and that the neighbors, according to Vergil's 

25 advice, ° by a faint tintinnahulum upon the most sonorous 
of their domestic utensils, were endeavoring to call them 
down into the hive again. And when the sound died 
quite away, and the hum had ceased, and the most 
favorable breeze told no tale, I knew that they had got 

30 the last drone of them all safely into the Middlesex hive, 
and that now their minds were bent on the honey with 
which it was smeared. 

I felt proud to know that the liberties of Massachu- 



THE BEAN-FIELD 161 

setts and of our fatherland were in such safe keeping ; 
and as I turned to my hoeing again I was filled with an 
inexpressible confidence, and pursued my labor cheer- 
fully with a calm trust in the future. 

When there were several bands of musicians, it sounded 5 
as if all the village was a vast bellows, and all the build- 
ings expanded and collapsed alternately with a din. But 
sometimes it was a really noble and inspiring strain that 
reached these woods, and the trumpet that sings of fame, 
and I felt as if I could spit a Mexican^ with a good relish, 10 
— for why should we always stand for trifles ? — and 
looked round for a woodchuck or a skunk to exercise 
my chivalry upon. These martial strains seemed as far 
away as Palestine, and reminded me of a march of cru- 
saders in the horizon, with a slight tantivy and tremulous 15 
motion of the elm-tree tops which overhang the village. 
This was one of the great days ; though the sky had from 
my clearing only the same everlastingly great look that 
it wears daily, and I saw no difference in it. 

It was a singular experience that long acquaintance 20 
which I cultivated with beans, what with planting, and 
hoeing, and harvesting, and threshing, and picking over, 
and seUing them, — the last was the hardest of all, — I 
might add eating, for I did taste. I was determined to 
know beans. ° When they were growing, I used to hoe 25 
from five o'clock in the morning till noon, and commonly 
spent the rest of the day about other affairs. Consider 
the intimate and curious acquaintance one makes with 
various kinds of weeds — it will bear some iteration in the 
account, for there was no little iteration in the labor — 3° 
disturbing their delicate organizations so ruthlessly, and 
making such invidious distinctions with his hoe, levelling 
whole ranks of one species, and sedulously cultivating 



162 WALDEN 

another. That's Roman wormwood, — that's pigweed, 
— that's sorrel, — that's piper-grass, — have at him, chop 
him up, turn his roots upwards to the sun, don't let 
him have a fibre in the shade, if you do he'll turn him- 
5 self t'other side up and be as green as a leek in two days. 
A long war, not with cranes, ° but with weeds, those 
Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their side. 
Daily the beans saw me come to their rescue armed with a 
hoe, and thin the ranks of their enemies, filling up the 

lo trenches with weedy dead. Many a lusty crest-waving 

Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowding 

comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust.° 

Those summer days which some of my contemporaries 

devoted to the fine arts in Boston or Rome, and others 

15 to contemplation in India, and others to trade in London 
or New York, I thus, with the other farmers of New Eng- 
land, devoted to husbandry. Not that I wanted beans to 
sat, for I am by nature a Pythagorean, ° so far as beans 
are concerned, whether they mean porridge or voting, 

20 and exchanged them for rice ; but, perchance, as some 
must work in the fields if only for the sake of tropes and 
expression, to serve a parable-maker one day. It was on 
the whole a rare amusement, which, continued too long, 
might have become a dissipation. Though I gave them no 

25 manure, and did not hoe them all once, I hoed them 
unusually well as far as I went, and was paid for it in the 
end, "there being in truth," as Evelyn° says, "no compost 
or l8etation° whatsoever comparable to this continual 
motion, repastination,° and turning of the mould with 

30 the spade." "The earth," he adds elsewhere, " especially 
if fresh, has a certain magnetism in it, by which it attracts 
the salt, power, or virtue (call it either) which gives it 
life, and is the logic of all the labor and stir we keep about 



THE BEAN-FIELD 163 

it, to sustain us ; all dungings and other sordid temperings 
being but the vicars succedaneous to this improvement." 
Moreover, this being one of those '' wornout and exhausted 
lay fields which enjoy their sabbath/' had perchance, as 
Sir Kenelm Digby° thinks likely, attracted "vital spirits" 5 
from the air. I harvested twelve bushels of beans. 

But to be more particular, for it is complained that 
Mr. Coleman has reported chiefly the expensive experi- 
ments of gentlemen farmers, my outgoes were: — 

For a hoe . . $0 54 lo 

Ploughing, harrowing, and furrowing . 7 50 Too much. 

Beans for seed 3 12^ 

Potatoes " 1 33 

Peas " 40 

Turnip seed 06 '5 

White line for crow fence 02 

Horse cultivator and boy three hours . 1 00 

Horse and cart to get crop .... 75 

In all $14 72i 

My income was (patrem familias vendacem, non 20 
emacem esse oportet), from 

Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold . . $16 94 

Five " large potatoes 2 50 

Nine " small potatoes 2 25 

Grass 1 00 25 

Stalks 75 

In all $23 44 

Leaving a pecuniary profit, as I have elsewhere said, of $8 71^. 

This is the result of my experience in raising beans. 
Plant the common small white bush bean about the 30 
first of June, in rows three feet by eighteen inches apart, 
being careful to select fresh, round, and unmixed seed. 
First look out for worms, and supply vacancies by plant- 
ing anew. Then look out for woodchucks, if it is an 



164 WALDEN 

exposed place, for they will nibble off the earliest tender 
leaves almost clean as they go; and again, when the 
young tendrils make their appearance, they have notice 
of it, and will shear them off with both buds and young 

5 pods, sitting erect like a squirrel. But above all, harvest 
as early as possible, if you would escape frosts and have 
a fair and salable crop ; you may save much loss by this 
means. 

This further experience also I gained. I said to myself, 

lo I will not plant beans and corn with so much industry 
another summer, but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, 
as sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and the 
like, and see if they will not grow in this soil, even with 
less toil and manurance, and sustain me, for surely it has 

15 not been exhausted for these crops. Alas! I said this 
to myself ; but now another summer is gone, and another, 
and another, and I am obliged to say to you. Reader, 
that the seeds which I planted, if indeed they were the 
seeds of those virtues, were wormeaten or had lost their 

20 vitality, and so did not come up. Commonly men will 
only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid. This 
generation is very sure to plant corn and beans each new 
year precisely as the Indians did centuries ago and taught 
the first settlers to do, as if there were a fate in it. I saw 

25 an old man the other day, to my astonishment, making 
the holes with a hoe for the seventieth time at least, and 
not for himself to lie down in ! But why should not 
the New Englander try new adventures, and not lay so 
much stress on his grain, his potato and grass crop, and 

30 his orchards, — raise other crops than these ? Why con- 
cern ourselves so much about our beans for seed, and not 
be concerned at all about a new generation of men ? We 
should really be fed and cheered if when we met a man we 



THE BEAN-FIELD 165 

were sure to see that some of the quahties which I have 
named, which we all prize more than those other produc- 
tions, but which are for the most part broadcast and 
floating in the air, had taken Voot and grown in him. 
Here comes such a subtile and ineffable quality, for in- 5 
stance, as truth or justice, though the slightest amount 
or new variety of it, along the road. Our ambassadors 
should be instructed to send home such seeds as these, 
and Congress help to distribute them over all the land. We 
should never stand upon ceremony with sincerity. We 10 
should never cheat and insult and banish one another 
by our meanness, if there were present the kernel of worth 
and friendhness. We should not meet thus in haste. 
Most men I do not meet at all, for they seem not to have 
time ; they are busy about their beans. We would not is 
deal with a man thus plodding ever, leaning on a hoe or a 
spade as a staff between his work, not as a mushroom, 
but partially risen out of the earth, something more than 
erect, like swallows alighted and walking on the ground : 

" And as he spake, his wings would now and then 20 

Spread, as he meant to fly, then close again," 

so that we should suspect that we might be conversing 
with an angel. Bread may not always nourish us ; but 
it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our 
joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew 25 
not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or 
Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy. 

Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that 
husbandry was once a sacred art ; but it is pursued with 
irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being 30 
to have large farms and large crops merely. We have 
no festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting 



166 WALDEN 

our Cattle-shows and so-called Thanksgivings, by which 
the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his 
calling, or is reminded of its sacred origin. It is the 
premium and the feast which tempt him. He sacrifices 
5 not to Ceres ° and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal 
Plutus° rather. By avarice and selfishness, and a grov- 
elling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the 
soil as property, or the means of acquiring property 
chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded 

lo with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He 
knows Nature but as a robber. Cato° says that the 
profits of agriculture are particularly pious or just 
{maximeque pius quaestus), and according to Varro° the 
old Romans "called the same earth Mother and Ceres, 

15 and thought that they who cultivated it led a pious and 
useful life, and that they alone were left of the race of 
King Saturn." 

We are wont to forget that the sun looks on our cul- 
tivated fields and on the prairies and forests without 

20 distinction. They all reflect and absorb his rays alike, ° 
and the former make but a small part of the glorious 
picture which he beholds in his daily course. In his 
view the earth is all equally cultivated like a garden. 
Therefore we should receive the benefit of his light and 

25 heat with a corresponding trust and magnanimity. What 
though I value the seed of these beans, and harvest that 
in the fall of the year? This broad field which I have 
looked at so long looks not to me as the principal cultivator, 
but away from me to influences more genial to it, which 

30 water and make it green. These beans have results which 
are not harvested by me. Do they not grow for wood- 
chucks partly? The ear of wheat (in Latin spica obso- 
letely spece, from spe° hope) should not be the only 



THE BEAN-FIELD 167 

hope of the husbandman; its kernel or grain (granum, 
from gerendo° bearing) is not all that it bears. How, 
then, can our harvest fail? Shall I not rejoice also at the 
abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary° of 
the birds ? It matters little comparatively whether the 5 
fields fill the farmer's barns. The true husbandman 
will cease from anxiety as the squirrels manifest no con- 
cern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or 
not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing 
all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his 10 
mind not only his first but his last fruits also. 



THE VILLAGE 

After hoeing, or perhaps reading and writing in the 
forenoon, I usually bathed again in the pond, swimming 
across one of its coves for a stint, and washed the dust 
of labor from my person, or smoothed out the last wrinkle 
5 which study had made, and for the afternoon was abso- 
lutely free. Every day or two I strolled to the village" 
to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on 
there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from 
newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic 

lo doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of 
leaves and the peeping of frogs. As I walked in the 
woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the 
village to see the men and boys ; instead of the wind among 
the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from 

IS my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river 
meadows ; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the 
other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me 
as if they had been prairie dogs, each sitting at the mouth 
of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. 

20 1 went there frequently to observe their habits. The 
village appeared to me a great news room ; and on one 
side, to support it, as once at Redding & Company's" on 
State Street, they kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal 
and other groceries. Some have such a vast appetite for 

25 the former commodity, that is, the news, and such sound 

168 



THE VILLAGE 169 

digestive organs, that they can sit forever in pubhc 
avenues without stirring, and let it simmer and whisper 
through them Hke the Etesian° winds, or as if inhahng 
ether, it only producing numbness and insensibility to 
pain, — otherwise it would often be painful to hear, — 5 
without affecting the consciousness. I hardly ever failed, 
when I rambled through the village, to see a row of such 
worthies, either sitting on a ladder sunning themselves, 
with their bodies inclined forward and their eyes glancing 
along the Hne this way and that, from time to time, with a 10 
voluptuous expression, or else leaning against a barn with 
their hands in their pockets, like caryatides, ° as if to prop 
it up. They, being commonly out of doors, heard whatever 
was in the wind. These are the coarsest mills, in which all 
gossip is first rudely digested or cracked up before it is 15 
emptied into finer and more delicate hoppers within doors. 
I observed that the vitals of the village were the grocery, 
the bar-room, the post-office, and the bank; and as a 
necessary part of the machinery, they kept a bell, a big 
gun, and a fire engine, at convenient places ; and the 20 
houses were so arranged as to make the most of mankind, 
in lanes and fronting one another, so that every traveller had 
to run the gauntlet, and every man, woman, and child 
might get a lick at him. Of course, those who were 
stationed nearest to the head of the line, where they could 25 
most see and be seen, and have the first blow at him, paid 
the highest prices for their places ; and the few straggling 
inhabitants in the outskirts, where long gaps in the line 
began to occur, and the traveller could get over walls or 
turn aside into cow-paths, and so escape, paid a very 30 
slight ground or window tax. Signs were hung out on all 
sides to allure him ; some to catch him by the appetite, as 
the tavern and victualling cellar; some by the fancy, 



170 WALDEN 

as the dry goods store and the jewellers ; and others by 
the hair or the feet or the skirts, as the barber, the shoe- 
maker, or the tailor. Besides, there was a still more 
terrible standing invitation to call at every one of these 
5 houses, and company expected about these times. For 
the most part I escaped wonderfully from these dangers, 
either by proceeding at once boldly and without deliberation 
to the goal, as is recommended to those who run the gaunt- 
let, or by keeping my thoughts on high things, like Orpheus,° 

lo who, ''loudly singing the praises of the gods to his lyre, 
drowned the voices of the Sirens, and kept out of danger." 
Sometimes I bolted suddenly, and nobody could tell my 
whereabouts, for I did not stand much about gracefulness, 
and never hesitated at a gap in a fence. I was even ac- 

15 customed to make an irruption into some houses, where I 
was well entertained, and after learning the kernels and 
very last sieve-ful of news, what had subsided, the pros- 
pects of war and peace, and whether the world was likely 
to hold together much longer, I was let out through the 

20 rear avenues, and so escaped to the woods again. 

It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to launch 
myself into the night, especially if it was dark and tempest- 
uous, and set sail from some bright village parlor or lecture 
room, with a bag of rye or Indian meal upon my shoulder, 

25 for my snug harbor in the woods, having made all tight 
without and withdrawn under hatches with a merry crew 
of thoughts, leaving only my outer man at the helm, or 
even tying up the helm when it was plain sailing. I had 
many a genial thought by the cabin fire "as I sailed. "° 

30 I was never cast away nor distressed in any weather, 
though I encountered some severe storms. It is darker 
in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose. 
I frequently had to look up at the opening between the 



THE VILLAGE 111 

trees above the path in order to learn my route, and, 
where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the 
faint track which I had worn, or steer by the known rela- 
tion of particular trees which I felt with my hands, passing 
between two pines for instance, not more than eighteen s 
inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably in the 
darkest night. Sometimes, after coming home thus late 
in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the path 
which my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded 
all the way, until I was aroused by having to raise my hand lo 
to lift the latch, I have not been able to recall a single 
step of my walk, and I have thought that perhaps my 
body would find its way home if its master should forsake 
it, as the hand finds its way to the mouth without assistance. 
Several times, when a visitor chanced to stay into evening, 15 
and it proved a dark night, I was obliged to conduct him 
to the cart-path in the rear of the house, and then point 
out to him the direction he was to pursue, and in keeping 
which he was to be guided rather by his feet than his eyes. 
One very dark night I directed thus on their way two 20 
young men who had been fishing in the pond. They 
lived about a mile off through the woods, and were quite 
used to the route. A day or two after one of them told 
me that they wandered about the greater part of the night, 
close by their own premises, and did not get home till 25 
toward morning, by which time, as there had been several 
heavy showers in the meanwhile, and the leaves were very 
wet, they were drenched to their skins. I have heard of 
many going astray even in the village streets, when the dark- 
ness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife, as the 30 
saying is. Some who live in the outskirts, having come to 
town a-shopping in their wagons, have been obliged to 
put up for the night ; and gentlemen and ladies making a 



172 WALDEN 

call have gone half a mile out of their way, feeling the side- 
walk only with their feet, and not knowing when they 
turned. It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valu- 
able experience, to be lost in the woods any time. Often 

5 in a snow-storm, even by day, one will come out upon a 
well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell which 
way leads to the village. Though he knows that he has 
travelled it a thousand times, he cannot recognize a feature 
in it, but it is as strange to him as if it were a road in Siberia. 

lo By night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely greater. In 
our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though uncon- 
sciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons 
and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we 
still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring 

15 cape ; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round, 
— for a man needs only to be turned round once with his 
eyes shut in this world to be lost, — do we appreciate 
the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every man 
has to learn the points of compass again as often as 

20 he awakes whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not 
till we are lost, in other words, not till we have 
lost the w^orld, do we begin to find ourselves, and 
realize where we are and the infinite extent of our 
relations. 

25 One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when 
I went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, 
I was seized and put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere 
related, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority 
of, the state which buys and sells men, women, and children, 

30 like cattle at the door of its senate house. I had gone 
down to the woods for other purposes. But, wherever a 
man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty 
institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to 



THE VILLAGE 173 

their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have 
resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run 
''amok"° against society; but I preferred that society 
should run "amok" against me, it being the desperate 
party. However, I was released the next day, obtained s 
my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in season to 
get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair Haven Hill. I 
was never molested by any person but those who repre- 
sented the state. I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk 
which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch lo 
or windows. I never fastened my door night or day, 
though I was to be absent several days ; not even when the 
next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And 
yet my house was more respected than if it had been sur- 
rounded by a file of soldiers. The tired rambler could 15 
rest and warm himself by my fire, the literary amuse him- 
self with the few books on my table, or the curious, by 
opening my closet door, see what was left of my dinner, 
and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet, though many 
people of every class came this way to the pond, I suffered 20 
no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I never 
missed anything but one small book, a volume of Homer, 
which perhaps was improperly gilded, and this I trust a 
soldier of our camp has found by this time. I am con- 
vinced, that if all men were to live simply as I then did, 25 
thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take 
place only in communities where some have got more than 
is sufficient while others have not enough. The Pope's 
Homers would soon get properly distributed. — 

" Nee bella fuerunt, 3° 

Faginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes." 

'' Nor wars did men molest, 
When only beechen bowls were in request." 



174 WALDEN 

**You who govern public affairs, what need have you to 
employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people 
will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like 
the wind ; the virtues of a common man are like the grass ; 
5 the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends." 



THE PONDS 

Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society 
and gossip, and worn out all my village friends, I rambled 
still farther westward than I habitually dwell, into yet 
more unfrequented parts of the town, 'Ho fresh woods and 
pastures new," or while the sun was setting, made my 5 
supper of huckleberries and blueberries on Fair Haven 
Hill, and laid up a store for several days. The fruits do 
not yield their true flavor to the purchaser of them, nor to 
him who raises them for the market. There is but one 
way to obtain it, yet few take that way. If you would 10 
know the flavor of huckleberries, ask the cow-boy or the 
partridge. It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have 
tasted huckleberries who never plucked them. A huckle- 
berry never reached Boston ; they have not been known 
there since they grew on her three hills. The ambrosial 15 
and essential part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which 
is rubbed off in the market cart, and they become mere 
provender. As long as Eternal Justice reigns, not one inno- 
cent huckleberry can be transported thither from the 
country's hills. 20 

Occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day, 
I joined some impatient companion who had been fishing 
on the pond since morning, as silent and motionless as a 
duck or a floating leaf, and, after practising various kinds 
of philosophy, had concluded commonly, by the time I 25 
arrived, that he belonged to the ancient sect of Coenobites. ° 

175 



176 WALDEN 

There was one older man, an excellent fisher and skilled in 
all kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased to look upon my 
house as a building erected for the convenience of fisher- 
men ; and I was equally pleased when he sat in my door- 

5 way to arrange his lines. Once in a while we sat together 
on the pond, he at one end of the boat, and I at the other ; 
but not many words passed between us, for he had grown 
deaf in his later years, but he occasionally hummed a 
psalm, which harmonized well enough with my philosophy. 

lo Our intercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken har- 
mony, far more pleasing to remember than if it had been 
carried on by speech. When, as was commonly the case, 
I had none to commune with, I used to raise the echoes by 
striking with a paddle on the side of my boat, filling the 

15 surrounding woods with circhng and dilating sound, 
stirring them up as the keeper of a menagerie his wild 
beasts, until I elicited a growl from every wooded vale and 
hill-side. 

In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing 

20 the flute, and saw the perch, which I seemed to have 
charmed, hovering around me, and the moon travelling 
over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks 
of the forest. Formerly I had come to this pond adventur- 
ously, from time to time, in dark summer nights, with a 

25 companion, and making a fire close to the water's edge, 
which we thought attracted the fishes, we caught pouts 
with a bunch of worms strung on a thread ; and when we 
had done, far in the night, threw the burning brands high 
into the air like skyrockets, which, coming down into the 

30 pond, were quenched with a loud hissing, and we were 
suddenly groping in total darkness. Through this, whis- 
tling a tune, we took our way to the haunts of men again. 
But now I had made my home by the shor^, 



THE PONDS 177 

Sometimes, after staying in a village parlor till the 
family had all retired, I have returned to the woods, and, 
partly with a view to the next day's dinner, spent the hours 
of midnight fishing from a boat by moonlight, serenaded 
by owls and foxes, and hearing, from time to time, the 5 
creaking note of some unknown bird close at hand. These 
experiences were very memorable and valuable to me, — 
anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty 
rods from the shore, surrounded sometimes by thousands 
of small perch and shiners, dimpling the surface with 10 
their tails in the moonlight, and communicating by a long 
flaxen line with mysterious nocturnal fishes which had 
their dwelling forty feet below, or sometimes dragging 
sixty feet of line about the pond as I drifted in the gentle 
night breeze, now and then feeling a slight vibration along 15 
it, indicative of some life prowling about its extremity, 
of dull uncertain blundering purpose there, and slow to 
make up its mind. At length you slowly raise, pulling 
hand over hand, some horned pout squeaking and squirm- 
ing to the upper air. It was very queer, especially in dark 20 
nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and 
cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint 
jerk, which came to interrupt your dreams and link you 
to Nature again. It seemed as if I might next cast my 
line upward into the air, as well as downward into this 25 
element which was scarcely more dense. Thus I caught 
two fishes as it were with one hook. 

The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, 
though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, 
nor can it much concern one who has not long frequented 30 
it or lived by its shore ; yet this pond is so remarkable 
for its depth and purity as to merit a particular description. 



178 WALDEN 

It is a clear and deep green well, half a mile long and a 
mile and three-quarters in circumference, and contains 
about sixty-one and a half acres° ; a perennial spring in the 
midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or 

5 outlet except by the clouds and evaporation. The sur- 
rounding hills rise abruptly from the water to the height of 
forty to eighty feet, though on the southeast and east they 
'attain to about one hundred and one hundred and fifty 
feet respectively, within a quarter and a third of a mile. 

lo They are exclusively woodland. All our Concord waters 
have two colors at least, one when viewed at a distance, 
and another, more proper, close at hand. The first de- 
pends more on the light, and follows the sky. In clear 
weather, in summer, they appear blue at a little distance, 

15 especially if agitated, and at a great distance all appear 
alike. In stormy weather they are sometimes of a dark 
slate color. The sea, however, is said to be blue one day 
and green another without any perceptible change in the 
atmosphere. I have seen our river, when, the landscape be- 

20 ing covered with snow, both water and ice were almost as 
green as grass. Some consider blue ''to be the color of 
pure water, whether liquid or solid." But looking directly 
down into our waters from a boat, they are seen to be of 
very different colors. Walden is blue at one time and 

25 green at another, even from the same point of view. Ly- 
ing between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the 
color of both. Viewed from a hill-top it reflects the color 
of the sky, but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next 
the shore, where you can see the sand, then a light green, 

30 which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the 
body of the pond. In some lights, viewed even from a hill- 
top, it is of a vivid green next the shore. Some have re- 
ferred this to the reflection of the verdure ; but it is equally 



THE PONDS 179 

green there against the railroad sand-bank, and in the 
spring, before the leaves are expanded, and it may be simply 
the result of the prevailing blue mixed with the yellow of 
the sand. Such is the color of its iris. This is that portion, 
also, where in the spring, the ice being warmed by the heat 5 
of the sun reflected from the bottom, and also transmitted 
through the earth, melts first and forms a narrow canal 
about the still frozen middle. Like the rest of our waters, 
when much agitated, in clear weather, so that the surface of 
the waves may reflect the sky at the right angle, or because 10 
there is more light mixed with it, it appears at a little 
distance of a darker blue than the sky itself ; and at such a 
time, being on its surface, and looking with divided vision, 
so as to see the reflection, I have discerned a matchless 
and indescribable light blue, such as watered or change- 15 
able silks and sword blades suggest, more cerulean° than 
the sky itself, alternating with the original dark green on 
the opposite sides of the waves, which last appeared but 
muddy in comparison. It is a vitreous° greenish blue, as I 
remember it, like those patches of the winter sky seen 20 
through cloud vistas in the west before sundown. Yet a 
single glass of its water held up to the light is as colorless 
as an equal quantity of air. It is well known that a 
large plate of glass will have a green tint, owing, as the 
makers say, to its "body," but a small piece of the same 25 
will be colorless. How large a body of Walden water 
would be required to reflect a green tint I have never 
proved. The water of our river is black or a very dark 
brown to one looking directly down on it, and, like that of 
most ponds, imparts to the body of one bathing in it a 3° 
yellowish tinge ; but this water is of such crystalline purity 
that the body of the bather appears of an alabaster white- 
ness, still more unnatural, which, as the limbs are magnified 



180 WALDEN 

and distorted withal, produces a monstrous effect, making 
fit studies for a Michael Angelo.° 

The water is so transparent that the bottom can easily 
be discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet. 

5 Paddling over it, you may see many feet beneath the sur- 
face the schools of perch and shiners, perhaps only an inch 
long, yet the former easily distinguished by their trans- 
verse bars, and you think that they must be ascetic fish 
that find a subsistence there. Once, in the winter, many 

lo years ago, when I had been cutting holes through the ice 
in order to catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore I tossed my 
axe back on to the ice, but, as if some evil genius had 
directed it, it slid four or five rods directly into one of the 
holes, where the water was twenty-five feet deep. Out of 

15 curiosity, I lay down on the ice and looked through the 
hole, until I saw the axe a little on one side, standing on its 
head, with its helve erect and gently swaying to and fro 
with the pulse of the pond ; and there it migTit have stood 
erect and swaying till in the course of time the handle 

20 rotted off, if I had not disturbed it. Making another 
hole directly over it with an ice chisel which I had, and 
cutting down the longest birch which I could find in the 
neighborhood with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which 
I attached to its end, and, letting it down carefully, passed 

25 it over the knob of the handle, and drew it by a line along 
the birch, and so pulled the axe out again. 

The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded 
white stones, like paving stones, excepting one or two short 
sand beaches, and is so steep that in many places a single 

30 leap will carry you into water over your head ; and were it 
not for its remarkable transparency, that would be the last 
to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side. 
Some think it is bottomless. It is nowhere muddy, and a 



THE PONDS 181 

casual observer would say that there were no weeds at all 
in it ; and of noticeable plants, except in the little meadows 
recently overflowed, which do not properly belong to it, a 
closer scrutiny does not detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor 
even a hly, yellow or white, but only a few small heart- 5 
leaves and potamogetons, and perhaps a water-target or 
two; all which however a bather might not perceive; 
and these plants are clean and bright like the element they 
grow in. The stones extend a rod or two into the water, 
and then the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest lo 
parts, where there is usually a little sediment, probably 
from the decay of the leaves which have been wafted on 
to it so many successive falls, and a bright green weed is 
brought up on anchors even in midwinter. 

We have one other pond just like this. White Pond 15 
in Nine Acre Corner, about two and a half miles westerly ; 
but, though I am acquainted with most of the ponds within 
a dozen miles of this centre, I do not know a third of this 
pure and well-like character. Successive nations per- 
chance have drank at, admired, and fathomed it, and 20 
passed away, and still its water is green and pellucid° as 
ever. Not an intermitting spring ! Perhaps on that 
spring morning when Adam and Eve were driven out of 
Eden, Walden Pond was already in existence, and even 
then breaking up in a gentle spring rain accompanied 25 
with mists and a southerly wind, and covered with myriads 
of ducks and geese, which had not heard of the fall, when 
still such pure lakes sufficed them. Even then it had 
commenced to rise and fall, and had clarified its waters 
and colored them of the hue they now wear, and obtained a 30 
patent of heaven to be the only Walden Pond in the world 
and distiller of celestial dews. Who knows in how many 
unremembered nations' literatures this has been the Casta- 



182 WALDEN 

Han Fountain° or what nymphs presided over it in the 
Golden Age° ? It is a gem of the first water which Con- 
cord wears in her coronet. 

Yet perchance the first who came to this well have left 

5 some trace of their footsteps. I have been surprised to 
detect encircling the pond, even where a thick wood has 
just been cut down on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path 
in the steep hill-side, alternately rising and falling, ap- 
proaching and receding from the water's edge, as old prob- 

lo ably as the race of man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal 
hunters, and still from time to time unwittingly trodden by 
the present occupants of the land. This is particularly 
distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond in 
winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appearing as a 

IS clear, undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and 
twigs, and very obvious a quarter of a mile off in many 
places where in summer it is hardly distinguishable 
close at hand. The snow reprints it, as it were, in clear 
white type alto-relievo. The ornamented grounds of villas 

20 which will one day be built here may still preserve some 
trace of this. 

The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, 
and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, 
many pretend to know. It is commonly higher in the winter 

25 and lower in the summer, though not corresponding to the 
general wet and dryness. I can remember when it was a 
foot or two lower, and also when it was at least five feet 
higher, than when I lived by it. There is a narrow sand- 
bar running into it, with very deep water on one side, 

30 on which I helped boil a kettle of chowder, some six 
rods from the main shore, about the year 1824, which 
it has not been possible to do for twenty-five years ; and on 
the other hand, my friends used to listen with increduHty 



THE PONDS 183 

when I told them, that a few years later I was accustomed 
to fish from a boat in a secluded cove in the woods, fifteen 
rods from the only shore they knew, w^hich place was long 
since converted into a meadow. But the pond has risen 
steadily for two years, and now, in the summer of '52, is just 5 
five feet higher than when I lived there, or as high as it was 
thirty years ago, and fishing goes on again in the meadow. 
This makes a difference of level, at the outside, of six or 
seven feet; and yet the water shed by the surrounding 
hills is insignificant in amount, and this overflow must be lo 
referred to causes which affect the deep springs. This 
same summer the pond has begun to fall again. It is 
remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, 
appears thus to require many years for its accomplish- 
ment. I have observed one rise and part of two falls, and 15 
I expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will 
again be as low as I have ever known it. Flints' Pond, a 
mile eastward, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by 
its inlets and outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds 
also, sympathize with Walden, and recently attained their 20 
greatest height at the same time with the latter. ° The 
same is true, as far as my observation goes, of White Pond. 
This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves this 
use at least ; the water standing at this great height for a 
year or more, though it makes it difficult to walk round it, 25 
kills the shrubs and trees which have sprung up about its 
edge since the last rise, pitch-pines, birches, alders, aspens, 
and others, and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore ; 
for, unlike many ponds and all waters which are subject to 
a daily tide, its shore is cleanest when the water is lowest. 30 
On the side of the pond next my house, a row of pitch-pines 
fifteen feet high has been killed and tipped over as if by a 
lever, and thus a stop put to their encroachments ; and their 



184 WALDEN 

size indicates how many years have elapsed since the last 
rise to this height. By this fluctuation the pond asserts its 
title to a shore, and thus the shore is shorn ° and the trees 
cannot hold it by right of possession. These are the lips 
5 of the lake on which no beard grows. It licks its chaps from 
time to time. When the water is at its height, the alders, 
willows, and maples send forth a mass of fibrous red roots 
several feet long from all sides of their stems in the water, 
and to the height of three or four feet from the ground, in 

lo the effort to maintain themselves ; and I have known the 
high-blueberry bushes about the shore, which commonly 
produce no fruit, bear an abundant crop under these cir- 
cumstances. 

Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so 

15 regularly paved. My townsmen have all heard the tradi- 
tion, the oldest people tell me that they heard it in their 
youth, that anciently the Indians were holding a pow-wow 
upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the 
pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used much 

20 profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one of 
which the Indians w^ere never guilty, and while they were 
thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only 
one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the 
pond was named. It has been conjectured that when 

25 the hill shook these stones rolled down its side and became 
the present shore. It is very certain, at any rate, that once 
there was no pond here, and now there is one ; and this 
Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the 
account of that ancient settler whom I have mentioned, 

30 who remembers so well when he first came here with his 
divining rod, saw a thin vapor rising from the sward, 
and the hazel pointed steadily downward, and he concluded 
to dig a well here. As for the stones, many still think that 



THE PONDS 185 

they are hardly to be accounted for by the action of the 
waves on these hills ; but I observe that the surrounding 
hills are remarkably full of the same kind of stones, so 
that they have been obliged to pile them up in walls on 
both sides of the railroad cut nearest the pond ; and, 5 
moreover, there are most stones where the shore is most 
abrupt ; so that, unfortunately, it is no longer a mystery 
to me. I detect the paver. If the name was not derived 
from that of some English locality, — Saffron Walden,° 
for instance, — one might suppose that it was called, 10 
originally, Walled-in Pond. 

The pond was my well ready dug. For four months 
in the year its water is as cold as it is pure at all times ; 
and I think that it is then as good as any, if not the best, 
in the town. In the winter, all water which is exposed 15 
to the air is colder than springs and wells which are pro- 
tected from it. The temperature of the pond water which 
had stood in the room where I sat from five o'clock in the 
afternoon till noon the next day, the sixth of March, 1846, 
the thermometer having being up to 65° or 70° some of the 20 
time, owing partly to the sun on the roof, was 42°, or 
one degree colder than the water of one of the coldest wells 
in the village just drawn. The temperature of the Boiling 
Spring the same day was 45°, or the warmest of any water 
tried, though it is the coldest that I know of in summer, 25 
when, beside, shallow and stagnant surface water is not 
mingled with it. Moreover, in summer, Walden never 
becomes so warm as most water which is exposed to the 
sun, on account of its depth. In the warmest weather 
I usually placed a pailful in my cellar, where it became cool 30 
in the night, and remained so during the day; though 
I also resorted to a spring in the neighborhood. It was 
as good when a week old as the day it was dipped, and had 



186 WALDEN 

no taste of the pump. Whoever camps for a week in 
summer by the shore of a pond, needs only bury a pail of 
water a few feet deep in the shade of his camp to be inde- 
pendent of the luxury of ice. 
5 There have been caught in Walden, pickerel, one 
weighing seven pounds, to say nothing of another which 
carried off a reel with great velocity, which the fisherman 
safely set down at eight pounds because he did not see him, 
perch and pouts, some of each weighing over two pounds, 

lo shiners, chivins or roach (Leuciscus pulchellus) , a very few 
breams, and a couple of eels, one weighing four pounds, — 
I am thus particular because the weight of a fish is com- 
monly its only title to fame, and these are the only eels 
I have heard of here ; — also, I have a faint recollection of a 

15 little fish some five inches long, with silvery sides and 
a greenish back, somev/hat dace-like in its character, 
which I mention here chiefly to link my facts to fable. 
Nevertheless, this pond is not very fertile in fish. Its 
pickerel, though not abundant, are its chief boast. I have 

20 seen at one time lying on the ice pickerel of at least three 
different kinds; a long and shallow one, steel-colored, 
most like those caught in the river ; a bright golden kind, 
with greenish reflections and remarkably deep, which is 
the most common here ; and another, golden-colored, and 

25 shaped like the last, but peppered on the sides with small 
dark brown or black spots, intermixed with a few faint 
blood-red ones, very much like a trout. The specific name 
reticulatus° would not apply to this ; it should be guttatus° 
rather. These are all very firm fish, and weigh more than 

30 their size promises. The shiners, pouts, and perch also, 
and indeed all the fishes which inhabit this pond, are much 
cleaner, handsomer, and firmer fleshed than those in the 
river and most other ponds, as the water is pure, and they 



THE PONDS 187 

can easily be distinguished from them. Probably many 
ichthyologists would make new varieties of some of them. 
There are also a clean race of frogs and tortoises, and a few 
mussels in it ; muskrats and minks leave their traces about 
it, and occasionally a travelling mud-turtle visits it. 5 
Sometimes, when I pushed off my boat in the morning, I 
disturbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted himself 
under the boat in the night. Ducks and geese frec^uent it 
in the spring and fall, the white-bellied swallows {Hirundo 
bicolor) skim over it, and the peetweets {Totanus macu-^o 
larius) 'Heter " along its stony shores all summer. I have 
sometimes disturbed a fishhawk sitting on a white-pine over 
the water ; but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wing of 
a gull, like Fair Haven. At most, it tolerates one annual 
loon. These are all the animals of conse([uence which 15 
frequent it now. 

You may see from a boat, in calm weather, near the 
sandy eastern shore, where the water is eight or ten feet 
deep, and also in some other parts of the pond, some circu- 
lar heaps half a dozen feet in diameter by a foot in height, 20 
consisting of small stones less than a hen's egg in size, 
where all around is bare sand. At first you wonder if the 
Indians could have formed them on the ice for any purpose, 
and so, when the ice melted, they sank to the bottom; 
but they are too regular and some of them plainly too fresh 25 
for that. They are similar to those found in rivers ; but as 
there are no suckers nor lampreys here, I know not by what 
fish they could be made. Perhaps they are the nests of 
the chivin. These lend a pleasing mystery to the bottom. 

The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. 30 
I have in my mind's eye the western indented with deep 
bays, the bolder northern, and the beautifully scolloped 
southern shore, where successive capes overlap each other 



188 WALDEN 

and suggest unexplored coves between. The forest has 
never so good a setting, nor is so distinctly beautiful, as 
when seen from the middle of a small lake amid hills which 
rise from the water's edge ; for the water in which it is 
5 reflected not only makes the best foreground in such a case, 
but, with its winding shore, the most natural and agreeable 
boundary to it. There is no rawness nor imperfection in 
its edge there, as where the axe has cleared a part, or a 
cultivated field abuts on it. The trees have ample room 

10 to expand on the water side, and each sends forth its 
most vigorous branch in that direction. There Nature 
has woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just 
gradations from the low shrubs of the shore to the highest 
trees. There are few traces of man's hand to be seen. 

15 The water laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago. 

A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive 

feature. It is earth's eye ; looking into which the beholder 

measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile° 

trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe 

20 it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhang- 
ing brows. 

Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end 
of the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a 
slight haze makes the opposite shore line indistinct, I 

25 have seen whence came the expression, ''the glassy 
surface of a lake. " When you invert your head, it looks hke 
a thread of finest gossamer stretched across the valley, 
and gleaming against the distant pine woods, separating 
one stratum of the atmosphere from another. You would 

30 think that you could walk dry under it to the opposite hills, 
and that the swallows which skim over might perch on it. 
Indeed, they sometimes dive below the line, as it were by 
mistake, and are undeceived. As you look over the pond 



THE PONDS ' 189 

westward you are obliged to employ both your hands to de- 
fend your eyes against the reflected as well as the true sun, 
for they are equally bright ; and if, between the two, you 
survey its surface critically, it is literally as smooth as 
glass, except where the skater insects, at equal intervals 5 
scattered over its whole extent, by their motions in the 
sun produce the finest imaginable sparkle on it, or, per- 
chance, a duck plumes itself, or, as I have said, a swallow 
skims so low as to touch it. It may be that in the dis- 
tance a fish describes an arc of three or four feet in the air, 10 
and there is one bright flash where it emerges, and another 
where it strikes the water; sometimes the whole silvery 
arc is revealed; or here and there, perhaps, is a thistle- 
down floating on its surface, which the fishes dart at and 
so dimple it again. It is like molten glass cooled but not 15 
congealed, and the few motes in it are pure and beautiful 
like the imperfections in glass. You may often detect a 
yet smoother and darker water, separated from the rest as 
if by an invisible cobweb, boom of the water nymphs, 
resting on it. From a hill-top you can see a fish leap in 20 
almost any part ; for not a pickerel or shiner picks an in- 
sect from this smooth surface but it manifestly disturbs 
the equilibrium of the whole lake. It is wonderful with 
what elaborateness this simple fact is advertised, — this 
piscine murder will out, — and from my distant perch I 25 
distinguish the circling undulations when they are half a 
dozen rods in diameter. You can even detect a water-bug 
{Gyrinus) ceaselessly progressing over the smooth surface 
a quarter of a mile off ; for they furrow the water slightly, 
making a conspicuous ripple bounded by two diverging 30 
lines, but the skaters glide over it without rippling it 
perceptibly. When the surface is considerably agitated 
there are no skaters nor water-bugs on it, but apparently. 



190 WALDEN 

in calm days, they leave their havens and adventurously 
glide forth from the shore by short impulses till they com- 
pletely cover it. It is a soothing employment, on one of 
those fine days in the fall when all the warmth of the sun 
S is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height 
as this, overlooking the pond, and study the dimpling 
circles which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise in- 
visible surface amid the reflected skies and trees. Over 
this great expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus at 
lo once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase 
of water is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and 
' all is smooth again. Not a fish can leap or an insect fall 
on the pond but it is thus reported in circling dimples, in 
lines of beauty, as it were the constant welling up of its 
15 fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of its 
breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are undis- 
tinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of the lake ! 
Again the works of man shine as in the spring. Ay, every 
leaf and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid- 
20 afternoon as when covered with dew in a spring morning. 
Every motion of an oar or an in.iect produces a flash of light ; 
and if an oar falls, how sweet the echo ! 

In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a 
perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious 
25 to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, 
and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on 
the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. 
Nations come and go without defiling. It is a mirror which 
no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, 
30 whose gilding Nature continually repairs ; no storms, no 
dust, can dim its surface ever fresh ; — a mirror in which 
all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by 
the sun's hazy brush, — this the light dustcloth, — which 



THE PONDS 191 

retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends its 
own to float as clouds high above its surface, and be re- 
flected in its bosom stifl. 

A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It 
is continually receiving new life and motion from above, s 
It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. 
On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself 
is rippled by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes 
across it by the streaks or flakes of light. It is remarkable 
that we can look down on its surface. We shall, perhaps, lo 
look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark 
where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it. 

The skaters and water-bugs finally disappear in the 
latter part of October, when the severe frosts have come ; 
and then and in November, usually, in a calm day, there 15 
is absolutely nothing to ripple the surface. One Novem- 
ber afternoon, in the calm at the end of a rain-storm of 
several days' duration, when the sky was still completely 
overcast and the air was full of mist, I observed that the 
pond was remarkably smooth, so that it was difficult to 20 
distinguish its surface; though it no longer reflected 
the bright tints of October, but the sombre November 
colors of the surrounding hills. Though I passed over 
it as gently as possible, the slight undulations produced by 
my boat extended almost as far as I could see, and gave a 25 
ribbed appearance to the reflections. But, as I was look- 
ing over the surface, I saw here and there at a distance a 
faint glimmer, as if some skater insects which had escaped 
the frosts might be collected there, or, perchance, the 
surface, being so smooth, betrayed where a spring welled 30 
up from the bottom. Paddling gently to one of these 
places, I was surprised to find myself surrounded by myri- 
ads of small perch, about five inches long, of a rich bronze 



192 WALDEN 

color in the grcon wator, sport, in^ thcro and constantly 
rising to the surface and dimpling it, somefimcs leaving 
huhhhis on it. In siK^h trans[)arent and seemingly bottom- 
less water, reflecting the clouds, I seemed to be floating 

5 through the air as in a balloon, and their swimming im- 
pressed me as a kind of flight or hovering, as if they were a 
comi)act flo(;k of birds passing just beneath my level on 
tlu; right or kift, \\\v\r fins, like sails, set all around them. 
'J'here were many such s(;hools in the pond, apparently 

lo imi)i-oving tin; short season Ix^forf; winttir would draw an 
icy shutt(;r over their broad skylight, somcitimes giving to 
the surface an ap[)earan(;e as if a slight breeze struck it, 
or a few rain-drops fell there. When I approached 
carekissly and alarmed them, they made a sudden plash 

15 and rii)i)ling with their tails, as if one had struck the water 
with a brushy bough, and instantly took refuge in the 
dei)ths. At length the wind rose, (he mist increased, and 
the waves began to run, and the perch leaped much 
higluu- th;in before, half out of water, a hundred black 

20 points, t hr(!(^ irHrh(^s long, at once above the surface. Even 
as late as tin; fifth of I )('ccmb(^r, one year, I saw some 
dimi)les on the surfac^e, and thinking it was going to rain 
hard immediately, the air being full of mist, I made haste 
to take my [)lMce at the oars and row homeward ; already 

25 t he rain seenuHl rapidly increasing, though I felt none on 
my cheek, and I anti(Mpated a thorough soaking. But 
sudd(Mily t,h(Mlimples (UNised, for th(\y were j)ro(luce(l by the 
|)erch, which the noise of my oars had scared into the 
de[)ths, and I saw th(>ir schools dimly disappearing; so I 

30 si)cnt a dry aft (n*noon after all. 

An old man who used to frequent this pond nearly 
sixty years ago, when it was dark with surrounding forests, 
tells me that in Oiose days he sometimes saw it all alive 



THE PONDS 193 

with ducks and other water fowl, and that there were many 
eagles about it. He came here a-fishing, and used an old 
log canoe which he found on the shore. It was made of 
two white-pine logs dug out and pinned together, and 
was cut off s(|uare at the ends. It was very clumsy, but 5 
lasted a great many years l)(!fore it became water-loggcul 
and perhai)S sank to the bottom. lie did not know whose 
it was; it bc^longed to the pond. il(^ used to make a 
(^al)le for his anchor of stri[)s of hickory bark tied together. 
An old man, a potter, who lived by the pond before the 10 
Revolution, told him once that there was an iron chest at 
the bottom, and that he had seen it. Sometimes it would 
come floating uj) to the shore; but when you went toward 
it, it would go ba(;k into deep water and disappear. I 
was pleased to hear of the old log canoe, which took the 15 
I)lace of an Indian one of the same material but more 
graceful (construction, which perchnnce had first been a 
tree on the bank, and then, as it were, fell into the water, 
to float there for a generation, the most proper vessel for 
the lake. I remember that when I first looked into these 20 
depths there were many large trunks to be seen indistinctly 
lying on the bottom, which had either been blown over 
formerly, or left on the ice at the last cut! ing, when wood 
was cheaper ; but now they have mostly disappeared. 

When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was com- 25 
plctely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, 
and in some of its coves grape vines had run over the trees 
next the water and formed bowers under which a boat 
could pass. The hills which form its shores are so steep, 
and the woods on them were then so high, that, as you 30 
looked down from the west end, it had the appearance of an 
amphitheatre for some kind of sylvan spectacle. I have 
spent many an hour, when I was younger, floating over its 



194 WALDEN 

surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to 
the middle, and lying on my back across the seats, in a 
summer forenoon, dreaming awake, until I was aroused by 
the boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what shore 
5 my fates had impelled me to ; days when idleness was the 
most attractive and productive industry. Many a forenoon 
have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most 
valued part of the day ; for I was rich, if not in money 
in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly ; 

lo nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the 
workshop or the teacher's desk. But since I left those 
shores the woodchoppers have still further laid them waste, 
and now for many a year there will be no more rambling 
through the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas 

IS through which you see the water. My Muse may be 
excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you expect 
the birds to sing when their groves are cut down ? 

Now the trunks of trees on the bottom, and the old 
log canoe, and the dark surrounding woods, are gone, 

20 and the villagers, who scarcely know where it lies, instead of 
going to the pond to bathe or drink, are thinking to bring 
its water, which should be as sacred as the Ganges at least, 
to the village in a pipe, to wash their dishes with ! — to 
earn their Walden by the turning of a cock or drawing of a 

25 plug ! That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh 
is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling 
Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all 
the woods on Walden shore; that Trojan horse, ° with a 
thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary 

30 Greeks ! Where is the country's champion, the Moore 
of Moore Hall,° to meet him at the Deep Cut° and thrust 
an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest ? 
Nevertheless, of all the characters I have known, per- 



THE PONDS 195 

haps Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. 
Many men have been Ukened to it, but few deserve that 
honor. Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first 
this shore and then that, and the Irish have built their sties 
by it, and the railroad has infringed on its border, and 5 
the icemen have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, 
the same water which my youthful eyes fell on ; all the 
change is in me. It has not acquired one permanent 
wrinkle after all its ripples. It is perennially young, and 
I may stand and see a swallow dip apparently to pick 10 
an insect from its surface as of yore. It struck me again 
to-night, as if I had not seen it almost daily for more 
than twenty years, — Why, here is Walden, the same 
woodland lake that I discovered so many years ago ; where 
a forest w^as cut down last winter another is springing up 15 
by its shore as lustily as ever ; the same thought is w^elling 
up to its surface that was then; it is the same liquid joy 
and happiness to itself and its Maker, ay, and it may be to 
me. It is the work of a brave man surely, in whom there 
was no guile ! He rounded this water with his hand, 20 
deepened and clarified it in his thought, and in his will 
bequeathed it to Concord. I see by its face that it is 
visited by the same reflection; and I can almost say, 
Walden, is it you ? 

It is no dream of mine, 25 

To ornament a line ; 

I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven 

Than I live to Walden even. 

I am its stony shore, 

And the breeze that passes o'er; 30 

In the hollow of my hand 

Are its water and its sand, 

And its deepest resort 

Lies high in my thought. 



196 WALDEN 

The cars never pause to look at it ; yet I fancy that the 
engineers and firemen and brakemen, and those passengers 
who have a season ticket and see it often, are better men for 
the sight. The engineer does not forget at night, or his 

5 nature does not, that he has beheld this vision of serenity 

and purity once at least during the day. Though seen 

but once, it helps to wash out State-street and the engine's 

soot. One proposes that it be called "God's Drop." 

I have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, 

lo but it is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related 
to Flints' Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small 
ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other directly 
and manifestly to Concord River, which is lower, by a simi- 
lar chain of ponds through which in some other geological 

15 period it may have flowed, and by a little digging, which 
God forbid, it can be made to flow thither again. If by 
living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the 
woods, so long, it has ac([uired such wonderful purity, 
who would not regret that the comparatively impure 

20 waters of Flints' Pond should be mingled with it, or itself 
should ever go to waste its sweetness in the ocean wave ? 

Flints', or Sandy Pond, in Lincoln, our greatest lake 
and inland sea, lies about a mile east of Walden. It is 
much larger, being said to contain one hundred and 

25 ninety-seven acres, and is more fertile in fish ; but it is 
comparatively shallow, and not remarkably pure. A walk 
through the woods thither was often my recreation. It 
was worth the while, if only to feel the wind blow on your 
cheek freely, and see the waves run, and remember the 

30 life of mariners. I went a-chestnutting there in the 
fall, on windy days, when the nuts were dropping into the 
water and were washed to my feet ; and one day, as I 



THE PONDS 197 

crept along its sedgy shore, the fresh spray blowing in 
ray face, I came upon the mouldering wreck of a boat, the 
sides gone, and hardly more than the impression of its fiat 
bottom left amid the rushes ; yet its model was sharply 
defined, as if it were a large decayed pad, with its veins. 5 
It was as impressive a wreck as one could imagine on the 
sea-shore, and had as good a moral. It is by this time 
mere vegetable mould and undistinguishable pond shore 
through which rushes and flags have pushed up. I used 
to admire the ripple marks on the sandy bottom, at the 10 
north end of this pond, made firm and hard to the feet of 
the wader by the pressure of the water, and the rushes 
which grew in Indian file, in waving lines, corresponding 
to these marks, rank behind rank, as if the waves had 
planted them. There also I have found, in considerable 15 
quantities, curious balls, ° composed apparently of fine 
grass or roots, of pipewort perhaps, from half an inch to 
four inches in diameter, and perfectly spherical. These 
wash back and forth in shallow water on a sandy bottom, 
and are sometimes cast on the shore. They are either 20 
solid grass, or have a little sand in the middle. At first 
you would say that they were formed by the action of 
the waves, like a pebble; yet the smallest are made of 
equally coarse materials, half an inch long, and they are 
produced only at one season of the year. Moreover, 25 
the waves, I suspect, do not so much construct as wear 
down a material which has already acquired consistency. 
They preserve their form when dry for an indefinite period. 
Flints' Pond! Such is the poverty of our nomencla- 
ture. What right had the unclean and stupid farmer, 30 
whose farm abutted on this sky water, whose shores he has 
ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it? Some skin- 
flint, who loved better the reflecting surface of a dollar, 



198 WALDEN 

or a bright cent, in which he could see his own brazen 
face; who regarded even the wild ducks which settled 
in it as trespassers; his fingers grown into crooked and 
horny talons from the long habit of grasping harpy-like° ; 
5 — so it is not named for me. I go not there to see him nor 
to hear of him ; who never saw it, who never bathed in it, 
who never loved it, who never protected it, who never 
spoke a good word for it, nor thanked God that he had 
made it. Rather let it be named from the fishes that 

lo swim in it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds which frequent 
it, the wild flowers which grow by its shores, or some 
wild man or child the thread of whose history is inter- 
woven with its own; not from him who could show no 
title to it but the deed which a like-minded neighbor or 

15 legislature gave him, — him who thought only of its 
money value; whose presence perchance cursed all the 
shore; who exhausted the land around it, and would 
fain have exhausted the waters within it, who regretted 
only that it was not English hay or cranberry meadow, — 

20 there was nothing to redeem it forsooth, in his eyes, — 
and would have drained and sold it for the mud at its 
bottom. It did not turn his mill, and it was no 'privilege^ 
to him to behold it. I respect not his labors, his farm 
where everything has its price; who would carry the 

25 landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could 
get anything for him ; who goes to market for his god as 
it is ; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear 
no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, 
but dollars ; who loves not the beauty of his fruits, whose 

30 fruits are not ripe for him till they are turned to dollars. 
Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth. Farmers 
are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they 
are poor, — poor farmers. A model farm ! where the 



THE PONDS 199 

house stands like a fungus in a muck-heap, chambers 
for men, horses, oxen, and swine, cleansed and uncleansed, 
all contiguous to one another ! Stocked with men ! A 
great grease-spot, redolent of manures and buttermilk ! 
Under a high state of cultivation, being manured with the 5 
hearts and brains of men ! As if you were to raise your 
potatoes in the church-yard ! Such is a model farm. 

No, no ; if the fairest features of the landscape are to be 
named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest 
men alone. Let our lakes receive as true names at 10 
least as the Icarian Sea, where "still the shore" a "brave 
attempt resounds." ° 

Goose Pond, of small extent, is on my way to Flints'; 
Fair Haven, an expansion of Concord River, said to con- 
tain some seventy acres, is a mile southwest; and White 15 
Pond, of ^about forty acres, is a mile and a half beyond 
Fair Haven. This is my lake country. These, with 
Concord River, are my water privileges° ; and night and 
day, year in year out, they grind such grist as I carry to 
them. 20 

Since the woodcutters, and the railroad, and I myself 
have profaned Walden, perhaps the most attractive, 
if not the most beautiful, of all our lakes, the gem of the 
woods, is White Pond ; — a poor name from its common- 
ness, whether derived from the remarkable purity of its 25 
waters or the color of its sands. In these as in other 
respects, however, it is a lesser twin of Walden. They 
are so much alike that you would say the}^ must be con- 
nected under ground. It has the same stony shore, and 
its waters are of the same hue. As at Walden, in sultry 30 
dog-day weather, looking down through the woods on some 
of its bays which are not so deep but that the reflection 



200 WALDEN 

from the bottom tinges them, its waters are of a misty 
bluish-green or glaucous color. Many years since I used 
to go there to collect the sand by cart-loads, to make 
sand-paper with, and I have continued to visit it ever 

5 since. One who frequents it proposes to call it Virid 
Lake. Perhaps it might be called Yellow-Pine Lake, 
from the following circumstance. About fifteen years 
ago you could see the top of a pitch-pine, of the kind 
called yellow-pine hereabouts, though it is not a distinct 

lo species, projecting above the surface in deep water, 
many rods from the shore. It was even supposed by some 
that the pond had sunk, and this was one of the primitive 
forest that formerly stood there. I find that even so long 
ago as 1792, in a ''Topographical Description of the 

IS Town of Concord," by one of its citizens, in the 
Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
the author, after speaking of Walden and White Ponds, 
adds : "In the middle of the latter may be seen, when the 
water is very low, a tree which appears as if it grew in 

2o the place where it now stands, although the roots are 
fifty feet below the surface of the water ; the top of this 
tree is broken off, and at that place measures fourteen 
inches in diameter." In the spring of '49 I talked with 
the man who lives nearest the pond in Sudbury, who told 

25 me that it was he who got out this tree ten or fifteen 
years before. As near as he could remember, it stood 
twelve or fifteen rods from the shore, where the water 
was thirty or forty feet deep. It was in the winter, and 
he had been getting out ice in the forenoon, and had 

30 resolved that in the afternoon, with the aid of his neighbors, 
he would take out the old yellow-pine. He sawed a channel 
in the ice toward the shore, and hauled it over and along 
and out on to the ice with oxen; but, before he had gone 



THE PONDS 201 

far in his work, he was surprised to find that it was wrong 
end upward with the stumps of the branches pointing 
down, and the small end firmly fastened in the sandy 
bottom. It was about a foot in diameter at the big end, 
and he had expected to get a good saw-log, but it was so 5 
rotten as to be fit only for fuel, if for that. He had some 
of it in his shed then. There were marks of an axe and 
of woodpeckers on the butt. He thought that it might 
have been a dead tree on the shore, but was finally blown 
over into the pond, and after the top had become water- 10 
logged, while the butt-end was still dry and light, had 
drifted out and sunk wrong end up. His father, eighty 
years old, could not remember when it was not there. 
Several pretty large logs may still be seen lying on the 
bottom, where, owing to the undulation of the surface, 15 
they look like huge water snakes in motion. 

This pond has rarely been profaned by a boat, for there 
is little in it to tempt a fisherman. Instead of the white 
lily, which requires mud, or the common sweet flag, the 
blue flag {Iris versicolor) grows thinly in the pure water, 20 
rising from the stony bottom all around the shore, where 
it is visited by humming-birds in June, and the color both 
of its bluish blades and its flowers, and especially their 
reflections, are in singular harmony with the glaucous 
water. 25 

White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the 
surface of the earth, Lakes of Light. If they were per- 
manently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, 
they would perchance be carried off by slaves, like pre- 
cious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors ; but being 30 
liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our successors 
forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of 
Kohinoor.° They are too pure to have a market value; 



202 WALL EN 

they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than 
our hves, how much more transparent than our char- 
acters, are they ! We never learned meanness of them. 
How much fairer than the pool before the farmer's door, 

5 in which his ducks swim ! Hither the clean wild ducks 
come. Nature has no human inhabitant who appre- 
ciates her. The birds with their plumage and their notes 
are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or maiden 
conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? 

[o She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they 
reside. Talk of heaven ! ye disgrace earth. 



BAKER FARM 

Sometimes I rambled to pine groves, standing like 
temples, or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs, 
and rippling with light, so soft and green and shady 
that the Druids° would have forsaken their oaks to wor- 
ship in them ; or to the cedar wood beyond Flints' Pond, 5 
where the trees, covered with hoary blue berries, spiring 
higher and higher, are fit to stand before Valhalla, ° and 
the creeping juniper covers the ground with wreaths full 
of fruit; or to swamps where the usnea Uchen hangs in 
festoons from the white-spruce trees, and toad-stools, u 
round tables of the swamp gods, cover the ground, and 
more beautiful fungi adorn the stumps, like butterflies 
or shells, vegetable winkles; where the swamp-pink 
and dogwood grow, the red alder-berry glows like eyes of 
imps, the waxwork grooves and crushes the hardest i 
woods in its folds, and the wild-holly berries make the 
beholder forget his home with their beauty, and he is 
dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild forbidden 
fruits, too fair for mortal taste. Instead of calling on 
some scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees, of 2< 
kinds which are rare in this neighborhood, standing far 
away in the middle of some pasture, or in the depths of 
a wood or swamp, or on a hill-top; such as the black- 
birch, of which we have some handsome specimens two 

203 



204 WALDE'N 

feet in diameter; its cousin the yellow-birch, with its 
loose golden vest, perfumed like the first; the beech, 
which has so neat a bole and beautifully lichen-painted, 
perfect in all its details, of which, excepting scattered 

5 specimens, I know but one small grove of sizable trees 
left in the township, supposed by some to have been 
planted by the pigeons that were once baited with beech 
nuts near by ; it is worth the while to see the silver grain 
sparkle when you split this wood; the bass; the horn- 

lo beam ; the celtis occidentalis, or false elm, of which we have 
but one well-grown ; some taller mast of a pine, a shingle 
tree, or a more perfect hemlock than usual, standing like 
a pagoda in the midst of the woods ; and many others I 
could mention. These were the shrines I visited both 

15 summer and winter. 

Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment 
of a rainbow's arch, which filled the lower stratum of the 
atmosphere, tingeing the grass and leaves around, and 
dazzling me as if I looked through colored crystal. It 

20 was a lake of rainbow light, in which, for a short while, 
I lived like a dolphin. If it had lasted longer it might 
have tinged my employments and life. As I walked on 
the railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the halo of 
light around my shadow, and would fain fancy myself 

25 one of the elect. One who visited me declared that the 
shadows of some Irishmen before him had no halo about 
them, that it was only natives that were so distin- 
guished. Benvenuto Cellini° tells us in his memoirs, 
that, after a certain terrible dream or vision which he had 

30 during his confinement in the castle of St. Angelo, a 
resplendent light appeared over the shadow of his head 
at morning and evening, whether he was in Italy or 
France, and it was particularly conspicuous when the 



BAKER FARM 205 

grass was moist with dew. This was probably the same 
phenomenon to which I have referred, which is especially- 
observed in the morning, but also at other times, and 
even by moonlight. Though a constant one, it is not 
aommonly noticed, and, in the case of an excitable imagi- 5 
nation like Cellini's, it would be basis enough far super- 
stition. Beside, he tells us that he showed it to very 
few. But are they not indeed distinguished who are 
conscious that they are regarded at all? 

I set out one afternoon to go a-fishing to Fair Haven, 10 
through the woods, to eke out my scanty fare of vege- 
tables. My way led through Pleasant Meadow, an adjunct 
of the Baker Farm, that retreat of which a poet has since 
sung,° beginning, — 

"Thy entry is a pleasant field, ^5 

Which some mossy fruit trees yield 
Partly to a ruddy brook, 
By gliding musquash ° undertook, 
And mercurial trout, 
Darting about." 20 

I thought of living there before I went to Walden. I 
''hooked" the apples, leaped the brook, and scared the 
musquash and the trout. It was one of those afternoons 
which seem indefinitely long before one, in which many 
events may happen, a large portion of our natural life, 25 
though it was already half spent when I started. By the 
way there came up a shower, which compelled me to stand 
half an hour under a pine, piling boughs over my head, 
and wearing m}'' handkerchief for a shed ; and when at 
length I had made one cast over the pickerel-weed, stand- 30 
ing up to my middle in water, I found myself suddenly 
in the shadow of a cloud, and the thunder began to 



206 WALDEN 

rumble with such emphasis that I could do no more than 
hsten to it. The gods must be proud, thought I, with 
such forked flashes to rout a poor unarmed fisherman. 
So I made haste for shelter to the nearest hut, which 
5 stood half a mile from any road, but so much the nearer 
to the pond, and had long been uninhabited : — 

" And here a poet builded, 
In the completed years, 
For behold a trivial cabin 
lo That to destruction steers." 

So the Muse fables. But therein, as I found, dwelt 
now John Field, Irishman, and his wife, and several chil- 
dren, from the broad-faced boy who assisted his father 
at his work, and now came running by his side from the 

15 bog to escape the rain, to the wrinkled, sibyl-like, cone- 
headed infant that sat upon its father's knee as in the 
palaces of nobles, and looked out from its home in the 
midst of wet and hunger inquisitively upon the stranger, 
with the privilege of infancy, not knowing but it was the 

20 last of a noble line, and the hope and cynosure of the 
world, instead of John Field's poor starveling brat. There 
we sat together under that part of the roof which leaked 
the least, while it showered and thundered without. I 
had sat there many times of old before the ship was built 

25 that floated this family to America. An honest, hard- 
working, but shiftless man plainly was John Field ; and 
his wife, she too was brave to cook so many successive 
dinners in the recesses of that lofty stove; Vith round 
greasy face and bare breast, still thinking to improve 

30 her condition one day ; with the never absent mop in one 
hand, and yet no effects of it visible anywhere. The 
chickens, which had also taken shelter here from the rain, 



BAKER FARM 207 

stalked about the room like members of the family, too 
humanized methought to roast well. They stood and 
looked in my eye or pecked at my shoe significantly. 
Meanwhile my host told me his story, how hard he worked 
''bogging " for a neighboring farmer, turning up a meadow^ 5 
with a spade or bog hoe at the rate of ten dollars 
an acre and the use of the land with manure for one year, 
and his httle broad-faced son worked cheerfully at his 
father's side the while, not knowing how poor a bargain 
the latter had made. I tried to help him with my experi- lo 
ence, telling him that he was one of my nearest neighbors, 
and that I too, who came a-fishing here, and looked like 
a loafer, was getting my living like himself ; that I lived 
in a tight, light, and clean house, which hardly cost more 
than the annual rent of such a ruin as his commonly 15 
amounts to ; and how, if he chose, he might in a month or 
two build himself a palace of his own ; that I did not use 
tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so 
did not have to work to get them ; again, as I did not work 
hard, I did not have to eat hard, and it cost me but a 20 
trifle for my food ; but as he began with tea, and coffee, 
and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to work hard to pay 
for them, and when he had worked hard he had to eat 
hard again to repair the waste of his system, — and so it 
was as broad as it was long, indeed it was broader than 25 
it was long, for he was discontented and wasted his life into 
the bargain ; and yet he had rated it as a gain in coming 
to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and 
meat every day. But the only true America is that 
country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of 30 
life as may enable you to do without these, and where the 
state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain the 
slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which 



208 WALDEN 

directly or indirectly result from the use of such things. 
For I purposely talked to him as if he were a philosopher, 
or desired to be one. I should be glad if all the meadows 
on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the 

5 consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves. 
A man will not need to study history to find out what is 
best for his own culture. But alas ! the culture of an 
Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of 
moral bog hoe. I told him, that as he worked so hard at 

lo bogging, he required thick boots and stout clothing, which 
yet were soon soiled and worn out, but I wore light shoes 
and thin clothing, which cost not half so much, though he 
might think that I was dressed like a gentleman, (which, 
however, was not the case,) and in an hour or two, without 

15 labor, but as a recreation, I could, if I washed, catch as 
many fish as I should want for two days, or earn enough 
money to support me a week. If he and his family would 
live simply, they might all go a-huckleberrying in the 
summer for their amusement. John heaved a sigh at 

20 this, and his wife stared with arms a-kimbo, and both 
appeared to be wondering if they had capital enough to 
begin such a course with, or arithmetic enough to carry it 
through. It was sailing by dead reckoning to them, 
and they saw not clearly how to make their port so; 

25 therefore I suppose they still take life bravely, after 
their fashion, face to face, giving it tooth and nail, not 
having skill to spht its massive columns with any fine 
entering wedge, and rout it in detail ; — thinking to deal 
with it roughly, as one should handle a thistle. But they 

30 fight at an overwhelming disadvantage, — living, John 
Field, alas ! without arithmetic, and failing so. 

"Do you ever fish?" I asked. "0 yes, I catch a mess 
now and then when I am lying by; good perch I catch," 



BAKER FARM 209 

"What's your bait?'' ''I catch shiners with fish-worms, 
and bait the perch with them." ''You'd better go now, 
John," said his wife with ghstening and hopeful face; 
but John demurred. 

The shower was now over, and a rainbow above the 5 
eastern woods promised a fair evening: so I took my 
departure. When I had got without I asked for a dish, 
hoping to get a sight of the well bottom, to complete my 
survey of the premises ; but there, alas ! are shallows and 
quicksands, and rope broken withal, and bucket irre- 10 
coverable. Meanwhile the right culinary vessel w^as 
selected, water was seemingly distilled, and after consulta- 
tion and long delay passed out to the thirsty one, — not 
yet suffered to cool, nor yet to settle. Such gruel sustains 
life here, I thought ; so, shutting my eyes, and exclud- 15 
ing the motes by a skilfully directed under-current, I 
drank to genuine hospitality the heartiest draught I 
could. I am not squeamish in such cases when manners 
are concerned. 

As I was leaving the Irishman's roof after the rain, 20 
bending my steps again to the pond, my haste to catch 
pickerel, wading in retired meadows, in sloughs and bog- 
holes, in forlorn and savage places, appeared for an in- 
stant trivial to me who had been sent to school and 
college; but as I ran down the hill toward the reddening 25 
west, with the rainbow over my shoulder, and some 
faint tinkling sounds borne to my ear through the cleansed 
air, from I know not what quarter, my Good Genius 
seemed to say, — Go fish and hunt far and wide day by 
day, — farther and wider, — and rest thee by many 30 
brooks and hearthsides without misgiving. Remember° 
thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from 
care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the 



210 WALDEN 

noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake 

thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields 

than these, no worthier games than may here be played. 

Grow wild according to thy nature, hke these sedges 

5 and brakes, which will never become English hay. Let 

the thunder rumble ; what if it threaten ruin to farmers' 

crops? that is not its errand to thee. Take shelter 

under the cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. Let 

not to get a living be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy 

lo the land, but own it not. Through want of enterprise 

and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and 

spending their lives like serfs. 

O Baker Farm ! 

"Landscape where° the richest element 
15 Is a little sunshine innocent." . . 

"No one runs to revel 
On thy rail-fenced lea." . . 

"Debate with no man hast thou, 

With questions art never perplexed, 
20 As tame at the first sight as now, 

In thy plain russet gabardine dressed." . . 

"Come ye who love. 
And ye who hate, 
Children of the Holy Dove, 
25 And Guy Faux of the state. 

And hang conspiracies 
From the tough rafters of the trees !" 

Men come tamely home at night only from the next 

field or street, where their household echoes haunt, and 

30 their life pines because it breathes its own breath over 

again ; their shadows morning and evening reach farther 

than their daily steps. We should come home from far, 



BAKER FARM 211 

from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, 
with new experience and character. 

Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse 
had brought out John Field, with altered mind, letting 
go ''bogging" ere this sunset. But he, poor man, dis- 5 
turbed only a couple of fins while I was catching a fair 
string, and he said it was his luck ; but when we changed 
seats in the boat luck changed seats too. Poor John 
Field ! — I trust he does not read this, unless he will 
improve by it, — thinking to live by some derivative 10 
old country mode in this primitive new country, — to 
catch perch with shiners. It is good bait sometimes, I 
allow. With his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, 
born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor 
life, his Adam's grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise 15 
in this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed 
bog-trotting feet get talaria° to their heels. 



HIGHER LAWS 

As I came home through the woods with my string of 
fish, traihng my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught 
a ghmpse of a woodchuck steaHng across my path, and 
felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly 
5 tempted to seize and devour him raw ; not that I was 
hungry then, except for that wildness which he repre- 
sented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, 
I found myself ranging the woods, like a half -starved 
hound, with a strange abandonment, seeking some kind of 

lo venison which I might devour, and no morsel could have 
been too savage for me. The wildest scenes had become 
unaccountably familiar. I found' in myself, and still 
find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spirit- 
ual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive, 

15 rank, and savage one, and I reverence them both. I 
love the wild not less than the good. The wildness and 
adventure that are in fishing still recommend it to me. 
I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my 
day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to 

20 this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my 
closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce 
us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at 
that age, we should have little acquaintance. Fishermen, 
hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives 

25 in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Na- 

212 



HIGHER LAWS 213 

ture themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for 
observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than phi- 
losophers or poets even, who approach her with expecta- 
tion. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The 
traveller on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head 5 
waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at 
the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman. He who is only a 
traveller learns things at second-hand and by the halves, 
and is poor authority. We are most interested when 
science reports what those men already know practically 10 
or instinctive^, for that alone is a true humanity, or ac- 
count of human experience. 

They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few 
amusements, because he has not so many public holi- 
days, and men and boys do not play so many games as 15 
they do in England, for here the more primitive but 
solitary amusements of hunting, fishing, anU the like have 
not yet given place to the former. Almost every New 
England boy among my contemporaries shouldered a 
fowling-piece betw^een the ages of ten and fourteen ; and 20 
his hunting and fishing grounds were not limited like the 
preserves of an English nobleman, but were more bound- 
less even than those of a savage. No wonder, then, that 
he did not oftener stay to play on the common. But 
already a change is taking place, owing, not to an increased 25 
humanity, but to an increased scarcity of game, for per- 
haps the hunter is the greatest friend of the animals 
hunted, not excepting the Humane Society. 

Moreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes to 
add fish to my fare for variety. I have actually fished 30 
from the same kind of necessity that the first fishers did. 
Whatever humanity I might conjure up against it was 
all factitious, and concerned my philosophy more than 



214 WALDEN 

my feelings. I speak of fishing only now, for I had long 
felt differently about fowling, and sold my gun before I 
went to the woods. Not that I am less humane than 
others, but I did not perceive that my feelings were much 

5 affected. I did not pity the fishes nor the worms. This 
was habit. As for fowling, during the last years that 
I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying or- 
nithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But I 
confess that I am now inclined to* think that there is a 

10 finer way of studying ornithology than this. It requires 
so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, 
if for that reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun.° 
Yet notwithstanding the objection on the score of hu- 
manity, I am compelled to doubt if equally valuable sports 

15 are ever substituted for these; and when some of my 
friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether 
they should let them hunt, I have answered, yes, — re- 
membering that it was one of the best parts of my educa- 
tion, — make them hunters, though sportsmen onl}^ at 

20 first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so that they 
shall not find game large enough for them in this or any 
vegetable wilderness, — hunters as well as fishers of men. 
Thus far I am of the opinion of Chaucer's nun,° who 

" yave not of the text a pulled hen 
25 That saith that hunters ben not holy men." 

There is a period in the history of the individual, as of 
the race, when the hunters are the "best men," as the 
Algonquins° called them. We cannot but pity the boy 
who has never fired a gun ; he is no more humane, while 
30 his education has been sadly neglected. This was my 
answer with respect to those youths who were bent on 
this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it. 



HIGHER LAWS 215 

No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, 
will wantonly murder any creature, which holds its life 
by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its ex- 
tremity cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, that 
my sympathies do not always make the usual philan- 5 
thropic° distinctions. 

Such -is oftenest the young man's introduction to the 
forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes 
thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he 
has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his lo 
proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and 
leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are 
still and always young in this respect. In some coun- 
tries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a 
one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from 15 
being the Good Shepherd. I have been surprised to con- 
sider that the only obvious employment, except wood- 
chopping, ice-cutting, or the like business, which ever 
to my knowledge detained at Walden Pond for a whole 
half day any of my fellow-citizens, whether fathers or 20 
children of the town, with just one exception, was fishing. 
Commonly they did not think that they were lucky, or 
well paid for their time, unless they got a long string of 
fish, though they had the opportunity of seeing the pond 
all the while. They might go there a thousand times before 25 
the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and 
leave their purpose pure ; but no doubt such a clarifying 
process would be going on all the while. The governor 
and his council faintly remember the pond, for they went 
a-fishing there when they w^ere boys; but now they are 30 
too old and dignified to go a-fishing, and so they know 
it no more forever. Yet even they expect to go to heaven 
at last. If the legislature regards it, it is chiefly to regu- 



216 WALDEN 

late the number of hooks to be used there ; but they know 
nothing about the hook of hooks with which to angle 
for the pond itself, impaling the legislature for a bait. 
Thus, even in civilized communities, the embryo man 
5 passes through the hunter stage of development. 

I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot 
fish without falling a little in self-respect. I have tried 
it again and again. I have skill at it, and, like many of 
my fellows, a certain instinct for it, which revives from 

lo time to time, but always when I have done I feel that it 
would have been better if I had not fished. I think that 
I do not mistake. It is a faint intimation, yet so are the 
first streaks of morning. There is unquestionably this 
instinct in me which belongs to the lower order of creation ; 

15 yet with every year I am less a fisherman, though without 
more humanity or even wisdom ; at present I am no fisher- 
man at all. But I see that if I were to live in a wil- 
derness I should again be tempted to become a fisher 
and hunter in earnest. Beside, there is something 

20 essentially unclean about this diet and all flesh, and I 
began to see where housework commences, and whence 
the endeavor, which costs so much, to wear a tidy and 
respectable appearance- each day, to keep the house 
sweet and free from all ill odors and sights. Having been 

25 my own butcher and scullion and cook, as well as the 
gentleman for whom the dishes were served up, I can 
speak from an unusually complete experience. The 
practical objection to animal food in my case was its un- 
cleanness; and, besides, Avhen I had caught and cleaned 

30 and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have 
fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, 
and cost more than it came to. A little bread or a few 
potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and 



HIGHER LAWS 217 

filth. Like many of my contemporaries, I had rarely 
for many years used animal food, or tea, or coffee, etc. ; 
not so much because of any ill effects which I had traced 
to them, as because they were not agreeable to my imagi- 
nation. The repugnance to animal food is not the effect s 
of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more 
beautiful to live low and fare hard in many respects; 
and though I never did so, I went far enough to please 
my imagination. I believe that every man who has ever 
been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the lo 
best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain 
from animal food,° and from much food of any kind. 
It is a significant fact, stated by entomologists, I find 
it in Kirby and Spence,° 'that "some insects in their 
perfect state, though furnished with organs of feed- 15 
ing, make no use of them^'; and they lay it down as 
"a general rule, that almost all insects in this state eat 
much less than in that of larvae. The voracious cater- 
pillar when transformed into a butterfly," . . . ''and 
the gluttonous maggot when become a fly," content them- 20 
selves with a drop or two of honey or some other sweet 
liquid. The abdomen under the wings of the butterfly still 
represents the larva. This is the tidbit which tempts 
his insectivorous fate. The gross feeder is a man in the 
larva state ; and there are whole nations in that condition, 25 
nations without fancy or imagination, whose vast abdo- 
mens betray them. 

It is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet 
as will not offend the imagination; but this, I think, is 
to be fed when we feed the body ; they should both sit 30 
down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may be done. 
The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of 
our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But 



218 WALDEN . 

put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison 
you. It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery. 
Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their 
own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or 
5 vegetable food, as is everyday prepared for them by others. 
Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentle- 
men and ladies, are not true men and women. This 
certainly suggests what change is to be made. It may be 
vain to ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to 

lo flesh and fat. I am satisfied that it is not. Is it not a 
reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he 
can and does live, in a great measure, by preying on other 
animals ; but this is a miserable way, — as any one who 
will go to snaring rabbits, or sL'iughtering lambs, may learn, 

15 — and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who 
shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and 
wholesome diet. Whatever my ow^n practice may be, 
I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the hu- 
man race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating 

20 animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating 
each other when they came° in contact with the more 
civilized. 

If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions 
of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what 

25 extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him ; and yet that 
way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies. 
The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels 
will at length prevail over the arguments and customs of 
mankind. No man ever followed his genius till it misled 

30 him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet 
perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be 
regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher 
principles. If the day and the night are such that you 



HIGHER LAWS 219 

greet them with joy, and Kfe emits a fragrance Hke flowers 
and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, 
more immortal, — that is your success. All nature is 
your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to 
bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest s 
from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they 
exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. 
Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never 
communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my 
daily life is somewhat intangible and indescribable as the lo 
tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, 
a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. 

Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish; 
I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it 
were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, 15 
for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an 
opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep sober always; 
and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe 
that water is the only drink for a wise man ; wine is not so 
noble a licjuor ; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning 20 
with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of 
tea ! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them ! 
Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently 
slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy 
England and America. Of all ebriosity,° who does not 25 
prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes ? I have 
found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors 
long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink 
coarsely also. But to tell the truth, I find myself at pres- 
ent somewhat less particular in these respects. I carry 30 
less religion to the table, ask no blessing; not because 
I am wiser than I was, but, I am obliged to confess, be- 
cause, however much it is to be regretted, with years I 



220 WALDEN 

have grown more coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these 
questions are entertained only in youth, as most believe 
of poetry. My practice is "nowhere," my opinion is here. 
Nevertheless I am far from regarding myself as one of those 
5 privileged ones to whom the Ved° refers when it says, 
that *'lie who has true faith in the Omnipresent Supreme 
Being may eat all that exists," that is, is not bound to 
inquire what is his food, or who prepares it ; and even in 
their case it is to be observed, as a Hindoo commentator 

lo has remarked, that the Vedant° limits this privilege to 
*'the time of distress." 

Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satis- 
faction from his food in which appetite had no share ? I 
have been thrilled to think that I owed a mental perception 

15 to the commonly gross sense of taste, that I. have been 
inspired through the palate, that some berries which I 
had eaten on a hill-side had fed my genius. ''The soul not 
being mistress of herself," says Thseng-tseu, "one looks, 
and one does not see ; one listens, and one does not hear ; 

20 one eats, and one does not know the savor of food." He 
who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a 
glutton ; he who does not cannot be otherwise. A puritan 
may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite 
as ever an alderman to his turtle. Not that food which 

25 entereth into the mouth defileth a man,° but the appetite 
with which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the 
quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors ; when that 
which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or in- 
spire our spiritual life, but the food for the worms that 

30 possess us. If the hunter has a taste for mud-turtles, 
muskrats, and other such savage tid-bits, the fine lady 
indulges a taste for jelly made of a calf's foot, or for sar- 
dines from over the sea, and they are even. He goes to 



HIGHER LAWS 221 

the mill-pond, she to her preserve pot. The wonder 
is how they, how you and I, can live this slimy beastly 
life, eating and drinking. 

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an 
instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the 5 
only investment that never fails. In the music of the harp 
which trembles round the world it is the insisting on this 
which thrills us. The harp is the travelling patterer for 
the Universe's Insurance Company, recommending its 
laws, and our little goodness is all the assessment that we 10 
pay. Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the 
laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on 
the side of the most sensitive. Listen to every zephyr 
for some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is unfortunate 
who does not hear it. We cannot touch a string or move 15 
a stop but the charming moral transfixes us. Many an irk- 
some noise, go a long way off, is heard as music, a proud 
sweet satire on the meanness of our lives. 

We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens 
in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile 20 
and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; 
like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our 
bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never 
change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain 
health of its own ; that we may be well, yet not pure. The 25 
other day I picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and 
sound teeth and tusks, which suggested that there was an 
animal health and vigor distinct from the spiritual. This 
creature succeeded by other means that temperance and 
purity. "That in which men differ from brute beasts," 3° 
says Mencius,° ^' is a thing very inconsiderable ; the com- 
mon herd lose it very soon ; superior men preserve it care- 
fully." Who knows what sort of life would result if we 



222 WALDEN 

had attained to purity ? If I knew so wise a man as could 
teach me purity I would go to seek him forthwith. "A 
command over our passions, and over the external senses 
of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be 
5 indispensable in the mind's approximation to God." Yet 
the spirit can for a time pervade and control every member 
and function of the body, and transmute what in form is 
the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The 
generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates 

lo and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates 
and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and 
what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, 
are but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at 
once to God when the channel of purity is open. By 

15 turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. 
He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in 
him day by day, and the divine being established. Per- 
haps there is none but has cause for shame on account of 
the inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. I 

20 fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and 
satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, 
and that, to some extent our very life is our disgrace. — 

" How happy's° he who hath due place assigned 
To his beasts and disafforested ° his mind ! 

25 Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and ev'ry beast, 

And is not ass himself to all the rest ! 
Else man not only is the herd of swine, ° 
But he's those devils too which did incline 
Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse." 

30 All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms ; all 
purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, 
or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appe- 



HIGHER LAWS 223 

tite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these 
things to know how great a sensuahst he is. The impure 
can neither stand nor sit with purity. When the reptile is 
attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at 
another. If you would be chaste, you must be temperate. 5 
What is chastity ? How shall a man know if he is chaste ? 
He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but 
we know not what it is. We speak conformably to the 
rumor which we have heard. From exertion come wisdom 
and purity ; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the 10 
student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean 
person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, 
whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without 
being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness, and all 
the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. 15 
Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be over- 
come. What avails that you are Christian, if you are not 
purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, 
if you are not more religious ? I know of many systems of 
religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader 20 
with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it 
be to the performance of rites merely. 

I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because 
of the subject, — I care not how obscene my words are, — 
but because I cannot speak of them without betraying my 25 
impurity. We discourse freely without shame of one form 
of sensuality, and are silent about another. We are so de- 
graded that we cannot speak simply of the necessary func- 
tions of human nature. In earlier ages, in some countries, 
every function was reverently spoken of and regulated by 3° 
law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver, 
however offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches 
how to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and 



224 WALDEN 

the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely 
excuse hiniself by calling these things trifles. 

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, 
to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor 
5 can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all 
sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh 
and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to 
refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuahty to 
imbrute them. 

lo John Farmer sat at his door one September evening, 
after a hard day's work, his mind still running on his labor 
more or less. Having bathed, he sat down to recreate his 
intellectual man. It was a rather cool evening, and some 
of his neighbors were apprehending a frost. He had not 

15 attended to the train of his thoughts long when he heard 
some one playing on a flute, and that sound harmonized 
with his mood. Still he thought of his work; but the 
burden of his thought was, that though this kept running in 
his head, and he found himself planning and contriving it 

20 against his will, yet it concerned him very little. It was 
no more than the scurf of his skin, which was constantly 
shuffled off. But the notes of the flute came home to his 
ears out of a different sphere from that he worked in, and 
suggested work for certain faculties which slumbered in 

25 him. They gently did away with the street, and the village, 
and the state in which he lived. A voice said to him, — 
Why do you stay here and live in this mean moiling° life, 
when a glorious existence is possible for you ? Those same 
stars twinkle over other fields than these. — But how to 

30 come out of this condition and actually migrate thither ? 
All that he could think of was to practise some new auster- 
ity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, 
and treat himself with ever increasing respect. 



BRUTE NEIGHBORS 

Sometimes I had a companion in my fishing, who came 
through the village to my house from the other side of the 
town, and the catching of the dinner was as much a social 
exercise as the eating of it. 

Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing now. s 
I have not heard so much as a locust over the sweet-fern 
these three hours. The pigeons are all asleep upon their 
roosts, — no flutter from them. Was that a farmer's 
noon horn which sounded from beyond the woods just now ? 
The hands are coming in to boiled salt beef and cider and lo 
Indian bread. Why will men worry themselves so ? He 
that does not eat need not work. I wonder how much they 
have reaped. Who would live there where a body can ' 
never think for the barking of Bose° ? And 0, the house- 
keeping ! to keep bright the devil's door-knobs, and scour 15 
his tubs this bright day ! Better not keep a house. Say, 
some hollow tree ; and then for morning calls and dinner- 
parties! Only a woodpecker tapping. 0, they swarm; 
the sun is too warm there ; they are born too far into life 
for me. I have water from the spring, and a loaf of brown 20 
bread on the shelf. — Hark ! I hear a rustling of the 
leaves. Is it some ill-fed village hound yielding to the 
instinct of the chase ? or the lost pig which is said to be in 
these woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain ? It comes 
on apace ; my sumachs and sweet-briers tremble. — Eh, 25 
Mr. Poet, is it you ? How do you like the world to-day ? 
Q 225 



226 WALDEN 

Poet° See those clouds; how they hang! That's 
the greatest thing I have seen to-day. There's 
nothing hke it in old paintings, nothing like it in foreign 
lands, — unless when we were off the coast of Spain. 
5 That's a true Mediterranean sky. I thought, as I have 
my living to get, and have not eaten to-day, that I might 
go a-fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the 
only trade I have learned. Come, let's along. 

Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon be 

lo gone. I will go with you gladly soon, but I am just con- 
cluding a serious meditation. I think that I am near the 
end of it. Leave me alone, then, for a while. But that 
we may not be delayed, you shall be digging the bait mean- 
while. Angle worms are rarely to be met with in these 

15 parts, where the soil was never fattened with manure; 
the race is nearly extinct. The sport of digging the bait 
is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's 
appetite is not too keen; and this you may have all to 
yourself to-day. I would advise you to set in the spade 

20 down yonder among the ground-nuts, where you see the 

■ johnswort waving. I think that I may warrant you one 

worm to every three sods you turn up, if you look well in 

among the roots of the grass, as if you were weeding. Or, 

if you choose to go farther, it will not be unwise, for I have 

25 found the increase of fair bait to be very nearly as the 
squares of the distances. 

Hermit alone. Let me see; where was I? Methinks 
I was nearly in this frame of mind ; the world lay about 
at this angle. Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing ? If I 

30 should soon bring this meditation to an end, would another 
so sweet occasion be likely to offer? I was as near being 
resolved into the essence of things as ever I was in my 
life. I fear my thoughts will not come back to me. If 



BRUTE NEIGHBORS 227 

it would do any good, I would whistle for them. When 
they make us an offer, is it wise to say, We will think of 
it? My thoughts have left no track, and I cannot find 
the path again. What was it that I was thinking 
of? It was a very hazy day. I will just try these three 5 
sentences of Con-fut-see° ; they may fetch that state about 
again. I know not whether it was the dumps or a budding 
ecstasy. Mem. There never is but one opportunity of 
a kind. 

Poet. How now. Hermit, is it too soon ? I have got 10 
just thirteen whole ones, besides several which are im- 
perfect or undersized; but they will do for the smaller 
fry; they do not cover up the hook so much. Those 
village worms are quite too large ; a shiner may make a 
meal off one without finding the skewer. ° 15 

Hermit. Well, then let's be off. Shall we to the 
Concord? There's good sport there if the water be not 
too high. 

Why do precisely these objects which we behold make 
a world? Why has man just these species of animals 20 
for his neighbors ; as if nothing but a house could have 
filled this crevice? I suspect that Pilpay & Co.° have 
put animals to their best use, for they are all beasts of 
burden, in a sense, made to carry some portion of our 
thoughts. 25 

The mice which haunted my house were not the common 
ones, which are said to have been introduced into the 
country, but a wild native kind not found in the village. 
I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested 
him much. When I was building, one of these had its 30 
nest underneath the house, and before I had laid the second 
floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regu- 



228 WALDEN 

larly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. 
It probably had never seen a man before; and it soon 
became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and 
up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides of the 

5 room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled 
in its motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow 
on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along 
my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my 
dinner, while I kept the latter close, and dodged and 

10 played at bo-peep with it ; and when at last I held still 
a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came 
and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned 
its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away. 

A phcebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for pro- 

15 tection in a pine which grew against the house. In June 
the partridge, {Tetrao umbellus,) which is so shy a bird, 
led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear 
to the front of my house, clucking and calhng to them 
like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself the hen 

20 of the woods. The young suddenly disperse on your ap- 
proach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind 
had swept them away, and they so exactly resemble the 
dried leaves and twigs that many a traveller has placed 
his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the whir of the 

25 old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, 
or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, without 
suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will some- 
times roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, 
that you cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of 

30 creature it is. The young squat stiU and flat, often run- 
ning their heads under a leaf, and mind only their mother's 
directions given from a distance, nor will your approach 
make them run again and betray themselves. You 



BRUTE NEIGHBORS 229 

may even tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a 
minute, without discovering them. I have held them in 
my open hand at such a time, and still their only care, 
obedient to their mother and their instinct, was to squat 
there without fear or trembling. So perfect is this 5 
instinct, that once, when I had laid them on the leaves 
again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it was found 
with the rest in exactly the same position ten minutes 
afterward. They are not callow like the young of most 
birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even 10 
than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent 
expression of their open and serene eyes is very mem- 
orable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They 
suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom 
clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when 15 
the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The 
woods do not yield another such a gem. The traveller 
does not often look into such a hmpid well. The ignorant 
or reckless sportsman often shoots the parent at such a 
time, and leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some 20 
prowUng beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the 
decaying leaves which they so much resemble. It is 
said that when hatched by a hen they will directly disperse 
on some alarm, and so are lost, for they never hear the 
mother's call which gathers them again. These were 25 
my hens and chickens. ./_- - 

It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and 
free though secret in the woods, and still sustain them- 
selves in the neighborhood of towns, suspected by hunters 
only. How retired the otter manages to live here ! He 3° 
grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps 
without any human being getting a glimpse of him. I 
formerly saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my 



230 WALDEN 

house is built, and probably still heard their whinnering 
at night. Commonly I rested an hour or two in the shade 
at noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read a 
little by a spring which was the source of a swamp and of 

5 a brook, oozing from under Brister^s Hill,° half a mile 
from my field. The approach to this was through a suc- 
cession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch- 
pines, into a larger wood about the swamp. There, in 
a very secluded and shaded spot, under a spreading white- 

Topine, there was yet a clean firm sward to sit on. I had 
dug out the spring and made a well of clear gray water, 
where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and 
thither I went for this purpose almost every day in mid- 
summer, when the pond was warmest. Thither too the 

IS wood-cock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, 
flying but a foot above them down the bank, while they 
ran in a troop beneath ; but at last, spying me, she would 
leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer 
and nearer till within four or five feet, pretending broken 

20 wings and legs, to attract my attention, and get off her 
young, who would already have taken up their march, 
with faint wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as she 
directed. Or I heard the peep of the young when I could 
not see the parent bird. There too the turtle-doves sat 

25 over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough of the 
soft white-pines over my head ; or the red squirrel, cours- 
ing down the nearest bough, was particularly famihar 
and inquisitive. You only need sit still long enough in 
some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants 

30 may exhibit themselves to you by turns. 

I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. 
One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my 
pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the 



BRUTE NEIGHBORS 231 

other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, 
fiercely contending with one another. Having once got 
hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and 
rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was 
surprised to find that the chips were covered with such 5 
combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a helium, a war 
between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the 
black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The 
legions of these Myrmidons° covered all the hills and 
vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already 10 
strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. 
It was the only battle-field which I have ever witnessed, 
the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging ; 
internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, 
and the black imperialists on the other. On every side 15 
they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise 
that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so 
resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in 
each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the 
chips, now at noon-day prepared to fight till the sun went 20 
down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had 
fastened himself like a vice to his adversary's front, and 
through all the tumblings on that field never for an 
instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, 
having already caused the other to go by the board ; while 25 
the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, 
as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of 
several of his members. They fought with more perti- 
nacity than bull-dogs. Neither manifested the least dispo- 
sition to retreat. It was evident that their battle-cry 30 
was Conquer or die. In the meanwhile there came 
along a single red ant on the hill-side of this valley, 
evidently full of excitement, who either had despatched 



232 WALDEN 

his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle ; probably 
the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs ; whose mother 
had charged him° to return with his shield or upon it. 
Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his 

5 wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his 
Patroclus.° He saw this unequal combat from afar, — 
for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the red, — 
he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard 
within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching 

lo his opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and 
commenced his operations near the root of his right fore- 
leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members ; 
and so there were three united for hfe, as if a new kind of 
attraction had been invented which put all other locks and 

15 cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this 
time to find that they had their respective musical bands 
stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national 
airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying 
combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even as if 

20 they had been men. The more you think of it, the less 
the difference. And certainly there is not the fight 
recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history 
of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with 
this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the 

25 patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for 
carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. ° Concord 
Fight ! Two killed on the patriots' side, and Luther 
Blanchard° wounded ! Why here every ant was a 
Buttrick,° — "Fire! for God's sake fire!" — and thou- 

30 sands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer.° There 
was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was 
a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, 
and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea ; and the 



BRUTE NEIGHBORS 233 

results of this battle will be as important and mem- 
orable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle 
of Bunker Hill at least. 

I took up the chip on which the three I have particu- 
larly described were struggling, carried it into my house, 5 
and placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order 
to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-men- 
tioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously 
gnawing at the near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed 
his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn 10 
away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of 
the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too 
thick for him to pierce ; and the dark carbuncles of the 
sufferer's eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could 
excite. They struggled half an hour longer under the 15 
tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier had 
severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the 
still living heads were hanging on either side of him like 
ghastly trophies at his saddlebow, still apparently as 
firmly fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with 20 
feeble struggles, being without feelers and with only the 
remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other w^ounds, 
to divest himself of them ; which at length, after half an 
hour more, he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he 
went off over the window-sill in that crippled state. 25 
Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the 
remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides,° I do 
not know ; but I thought that his industry would not be 
worth much thereafter. I never learned w^hich party 
was victorious, nor the cause of the war ; but I felt for 30 
the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings excited 
and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and 
carnage, of a human battle before my door. 



234 WALDEN 

Kirby and Spence° tell us that the battles of ants 
have long been celebrated, and the date of them recorded, 
though they say that Huber° is the only modern author 
who appears to have witnessed them. '^^Eneas Sylvius," 

5 say they, "after giving a very circumstantial account of 
one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small 
species on the trunk of a pear tree," adds that '"This 
action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the 
Fourth, ° in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an 

lo eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the 
battle with the greatest fidelity.' A similar engagement 
between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, ° 
in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have 
buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of 

15 their giant enemies a prey to the b!rds. This event 
happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Chris- 
tiern the Second ° from Sweden." The battle which I 
witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk,° five 
years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave 

2oBill.° 

Many a village Bose,° fit only to course a mud-turtle 
in a victualling cellar, sported his heavy quarters in 
the woods, without the knowledge of his master, and 
ineffectually smelled at old fox burrows and woodchucks' 

25 holes ; led perchance by some slight cur which nimbly 
threaded the wood, and might still inspire a natural terror 
in its denizens ; — now far behind his guide, barking like 
a canine bull toward some small squirrel which had treed 
itself for scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the bushes 

30 with his weight, imagining that he is on the track of 
some stray member of the jerbilla° family. Once I 
was surprised to see a cat walking along the stony shore 
of the pond, for they rarely wander so far from home. 



BRUTE NEIGHBORS 235 

The surprise was mutual. Nevertheless the most domestic 
cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at 
home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, 
proves herself more native there than the regular inhab- 
itants. Once, when berrying, I met with a cat with young 5 
kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they all, like their 
mother, had their backs up and were fiercely spitting at 
me. A few years before I lived in the woods there was 
what was called a "winged cat " in one of the farm-houses 
in Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr. Gilian Baker's. When 10 
I called to see her in June, 1842, she was gone a-hunting 
in the woods, as was her wont, (I am not sure whether 
it was a male or female, and so use the more common 
pronoun,) but her mistress told me that she came into 
the neighborhood a httle more than a year before, in 15 
April, and was finally taken into their house; that she 
was of a dark brownish-gray color, with a white spot on her 
throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy tail like a 
fox ; that in the winter the fur grew thick and flatted out 
along her sides, forming strips ten or twelve inches long 20 
by two and a half wide, and under her chin like a muff, 
the upper side loose, the under matted like felt, and in the 
spring these appendages dropped off. They gave me a 
pair of her "wings," which I keep still. There is no ap- 
pearance of a membrane about them. Some thought it 25 
was part flying-squirrel or some other wild animal, which 
is not impossible, for, according to naturalists, prolific 
hybrids have been produced by the union of the marten 
and domestic cat. This would have been the right kind 
of cat for me to keep, if I had kept any ; for why should 30 
not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse ? 

In the fall the loon {Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, 
to moult and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring 



236 WALDEN 

with his wild laughter before I had risen. At rumor of 
his arrival all the Mill-dam° sportsmen are on the alert, 
in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with 
patent rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses. They 
5 come rustling through the woods like autumn leaves, at 
least ten men to one loon. Some station themselves 
on this side of the pond, some on that, for the poor bird 
cannot be omnipresent ; if he dive here he must come up 
there. But now the kind October wind rises, rustling the 

lo leaves and rippling the surface of the water, so that no 
loon can be heard or seen, though his foes sweep the pond 
with spy-glasses, and make the woods resound with their 
discharges. The waves generously rise and dash angrily, 
taking sides with all waterfowl, and our sportsmen must 

IS beat a retreat to town and shop and unfinished jobs. 
But they were too often successful. When I went to get 
a pail of water early in the morning I frequently saw 
this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few 
rods. If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order 

20 to see how he would manoeuvre, he would dive and be 
completely lost, so that I did not discover him again, 
sometimes, till the latter part of the day. But I was more 
than a match for him on the surface. He commonly 
went off in a rain. 

25 As I was paddhng along the north shore one very calm 
October afternoon, for such days especially they settle 
on to the lakes, like the milkweed down, having looked in 
vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out 
from the shore toward the middle a few rods in front of 

30 me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself. I pur- 
sued with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up I 
was nearer than before. He dived again, but I mis- 
calculated the direction he would take, and we were fifty 



BRUTE NEIGHBORS 237 

rods apart when he came to the surface this time, for I had 
helped to widen the interval; and again he laughed 
loud and long, and with more reason than before. He 
manoeuvred so cunningly that I could not get within half 
a dozen rods of him. Each time, when he came to the 5 
surface, turning his head this way and that, he coolly sur- 
veyed the water and the land, and apparently chose his 
course so that he might come up where there was the 
widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance 
from the boat. It was surprising how quickly he made 10 
up his mind and put his resolve into execution. He 
led me at once to the widest part of the pond, and could 
not be driven from it. While he was thinking one thing 
in his brain, I was endeavoring to divine his thought in 
mine. It was a pretty game, played on the smooth sur- 15 
face of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your 
adversary's checker disappears beneath the board, and the 
problem is to place yours nearest to where his will appear 
again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on 
the opposite side of me, having apparently passed directly 20 
under the boat. So long-winded was he and so unweari- 
able, that when he had swum farthest he would immediately 
plunge again, nevertheless ; and then no wit could divine 
where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth surface, he 
might be speeding his way like a fish, for he had time and 25 
ability to visit the bottom of the pond in its deepest 
part. It is said that loons have been caught in the New 
York lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with hooks 
set for trout, — though Walden is deeper than that. 
How surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly 30 
visitor from another sphere speeding his way amid their 
schools ! Yet he appeared to know his course as surely 
underwater as on the surface, and swam much faster there, 



238 WALDEN 

Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the 
surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and in- 
stantly dived again. I found that it was as well for me 
to rest on my oars and wait his reappearing as to endeavor 

5 to calculate where he would rise ; for again and again, 
when I was straining my eyes over the surface one way, 
I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh 
behind me. But why, after displaying so much cunning, 
did he invariably betray himself the moment he came up 

lo by that loud laugh ? Did not his white breast enough 
betray him? He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. 
I could commonly hear the plash of the water when he 
came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour 
he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as wilhngly and swam 

15 yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how 
serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came 
to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet 
beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet 
somewhat like that of a water-fowl ; but occasionally, 

20 when he had balked me most successfully and come up a 
long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, 
probably more like that of a wolf than any bird ; as when 
a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately 
howls. This was his looning, — perhaps the wildest sound 

25 that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and 
wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my 
efforts, confident of his own resources. Though the 
sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth 
that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not 

30 hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and 
the smoothness of the water were all against him. At 
length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of 
those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons 



BRUTE NEIGHBORS 239 

to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from 
the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air 
with misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the 
prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry with 
me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the 5 
tumultuous surface. 

For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly 
tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from 
the sportsmen; tricks which they will have less need to 
practise in Louisiana bayous. ° When compelled to rise 10 
they would sometintes circle round and round and over 
the pond at a considerable height, from which they could 
easily see to other ponds and the river, Hke black motes 
in the sky ; and, when I thought they had gone off thither 
long since, they would settle down by a slanting flight 15 
of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which was left 
free ; but what beside safety they got by sailing in the 
middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its 
w^ater for the same reason that I do. 



HOUSE-WARMING 

In October I went a-graping to the river meadows, 
and loaded myself with clusters more precious for their 
beauty and fragrance than for food. There too I ad- 
mired, though I did not gather, the cranberries, small 

5 waxen gems, pendants of the meadow grass, pearly and 
red, which the farmer plucks with an ugl}^ rake, leaving 
the smooth meadow in a snarl, heedlessly measuring them 
by the bushel and the dollar only, and sells the spoils of 
the meads to Boston and New York; destined to be 

lo jammed, to satisfy the taste of lovers of Nature there. 
So butchers rake the tongues of bison out of the prairie 
grass, regardless of the torn and drooping plant. The 
barberry's brilliant fruit was likewise food for my eyes 
merely; but I collected a small store of wild apples 

15 for coddling, which the proprietor and travellers had 
overlooked. When chestnuts were ripe I laid up half 
a bushel for winter. It was very exciting at that season 
to roam the then boundless chestnut woods of Lin- 
coln, — they now sleep their long sleep under the rail- 

20 road, — with a bag on my shoulder, and a stick to 
open burrs with in my hand, for I did not always wait 
for the frost, amid the rustling of leaves and the loud re- 
proofs of the red squirrels and the jays, whose half-con- 
sumed nuts I sometimes stole, for the burrs M'hich they 

25 had selected were sure to contain sound ones. Occasionally 
I climbed and shook the trees. They grew also behind my 
240 



HOUSE-WARMING 241 

house, and one large tree which almost overshadowed it, 
was, when in flower, a bouquet which scented the whole 
neighborhood, but the squirrels and the jays got most 
of its fruit ; the last coming in flocks early in the morning 
and picking the nuts out of the burrs before they fell. I 5 
relinquished these trees to them and visited the more 
distant woods composed wholly of chestnut. These 
nuts, as far as they went, were a good substitute for bread. 
Many other substitutes might, perhaps, be found. Dig- 
ging one day for fish-worms, I discovered the ground-nut lo 
(Apios tuber osa) on its string, the potato of the aborig- 
ines, a sort of fabulous fruit, which I had begun to doubt 
if I had ever dug and eaten in childhood, as I had told, 
and had not dreamed it. I had often since seen its crim- 
pled red velvety blossom supported by the stems of other 15 
plants without knowing it to be the same. Cultivation 
has well-nigh exterminated it. It has a sweetish taste, 
much like that of a frostbitten potato, and I found it 
better boiled than roasted. This tuber seemed like a 
faint promise of Nature to rear her own children and feed 20 
them simply here at some future period. In these days of 
fatted cattle and waving grain-fields, this humble root, 
which was once the totem° of an Indian tribe, is quite 
forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine; but let 
wild Nature reign here once more, and the tender and 25 
luxurious English grains will probably disappear before 
a myriad of foes, and without the care of man the crow 
may carry back even the last seed of corn to the great 
corn-field of the Indian's God in the south-west, whence 
he is said to have brought it ; but the now almost exter- 30 
minated ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in 
spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and 
resume its ancient importance and dignity as the diet 

R 



242 WALDEN 

of the hunter tribe. Some Indian Ceres or Minerva 
must have been the inventor and bestower of it; and 
when the reign of poetry commences here, its leaves and 
string of nuts may be represented on our works of art. 

5 Already, by the first of September, I had seen two 
or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond, 
beneath where the white stems of three aspens diverged, 
at the point of a promontory, next the water. Ah, many 
a tale their color told ! And gradually from week to week 

lo the character of each tree came out, and it admired itself 
reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. Each morn- 
ing the manager of this gallery substituted some new 
picture, distinguished by more brilliant or harmonious 
coloring, for the old upon the walls. 

15 The wasps came by thousands to my lodge in 
October, as to winter quarters, and settled on my win- 
dows within and on the walls overhead, sometimes 
deterring visitors from entering. Each morning, when 
they were numbed with cold, I swept some of them out, 

20 but I did not trouble myself much to get rid of them ; 
I even felt complimented by their regarding my house 
as a desirable shelter. They never molested me seriously, 
though they bedded with me; and they gradually dis- 
appeared, into what crevices I do not know, avoiding 

25 winter and unspeakable cold. 

Like the wasps, before I finally went into winter quar- 
ters in November, I used to resort to the northeast side 
of Walden, which the sun, reflected from the pitch-pine 
woods and the stony shore, made the fireside of the pond ; 

30 it is so much pleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by 
the sun while you can be, than by artificial fire. I thus 
warmed myseK by the still glowing embers which the 
summer, hke a departed hunter, had left. 



HO USE- WA RMIN G 243 

When I came to build my chimney I studied masonry. 
My bricks being second-hand ones required to be cleaned 
with a trowel, so that I learned more than usual of the 
qualities of bricks and trowels. The mortar on them 
was fifty years old, and was said to be still growing harder ; 5 
but this is one of those sayings which men love to repeat 
whether they are true or not. Such sayings themselves 
grow harder and adhere more firmly with age, and it would 
take many blows with a trowel to clean an old wise- 
acre of them. Many of the villages of Mesopotamia 10 
are built of second-hand bricks of a very good quality, 
obtained from the ruins of Babylon, and the cement on 
them is older and probably harder still. However that 
may be, I was struck by the peculiar toughness of the steel 
which bore so many violent blows without being worn 15 
out. As my bricks had been in a chimney before, though 
I did not read the name of Nebuchadnezzar on them, 
I picked out as many fireplace bricks as I could find, to 
save work and waste, and I filled the spaces between the 
bricks about the fireplace with stones from the pond 20 
shore, and also made my mortar with the white sand, 
from the same place. I lingered most about the fireplace, 
as the most vital part of the house. Indeed, I worked 
so deliberately, that though I commenced at the ground 
in the morning, a course of bricks raised a few inches above 25 
the floor served for my pillow at night ; yet I did not 
get a stiff neck for it that I remember ; my stiff neck is of 
older date. I took a poet° to board for a fortnight 
about those times, which caused me to be put to it for 
room. He brought his own knife, though I had two, 30 
and we used to scour them by thrusting them into the 
earth. He shared with me the labors of cooking. I was 
pleased to see my work rising so square and solid by degrees, 



244 WALDEN 

and reflected, that, if it proceeded slowly, it was calculated 
to endure a long time. The chimney is to some extent 
an independent structure, standing on the ground and 
rising through the house to the heavens; even after the 
5 house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its impor- 
tance and independence are apparent. This was tow- 
ard the end of summer. It was now November. 

The north wind had already begun to cool the pond, 

lo though it took many weeks of steady blowing to accom- 
plish it, it is so deep. When I began to have a fire at 
evening, before I plastered my house, the chimney car- 
ried smoke particularly well, because of the numerous 
chinks between the boards. Yet I passed some cheerful 

15 evenings in that cool and airy apartment, surrounded 
by the rough brown boards full of knots, and rafters with 
the bark on high overhead. My house never pleased my 
eye so much after it was plastered, though I was obhged 
to confess that it was more comfortable. Should not every 

20 apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create 
some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may 
play at evening about the rafters? These forms are 
more agreeable to the fancy and imagination than fresco 
paintings or other the most expensive furniture. I now 

25 first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began 
to use it for warmth as w^ell as shelter. I had got a couple 
of old fire-dogs to keep the wood from the hearth, and it 
did me good to see the soot form on the back of the 
chimney which I had built, and I poked the fire wnth 

30 more right and more satisfaction than usual. My dwell- 
ing was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it ; 
but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and re- 
mote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were 



HOUSE-WARMING 245 

concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, 
parlor, and keeping-room ; and whatever satisfaction par- 
ent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a 
house, I enjoyed it all. Cato° says, the master of family 
{paterfamilias) must have in his rustic villa ''cellamS 
oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem ex- 
.pectare, et rei, et virtuti, et glorise erit," that is, ''an oil 
and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant 
to expect hard times ; it will be for his advantage, and 
virtue, and glory.'' I had in my cellar a firkin°of pota- lo 
toes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, 
and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of 
rye and Indian meal a peck each. 

I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, 
standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without 15 
gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one 
room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without 
ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins° sup- 
porting a sort of lower heaven over one's head, — useful 
to keep off rain and snow; where the king and queen 20 
posts° stand out to receive your homage, when you have 
done reverence to the prostrate Saturn° of an older 
dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, 
wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the 
roof ; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the 25 
recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of 
the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with 
the spiders, if they choose ; a house which you have got 
into when you have opened the outside door, and the 
ceremony is over ; where the weary traveller may wash, 30 
and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey ; 
such shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous 
night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing 



246 WALDEN 

for house-keeping ; where you can see all the treasures of 
the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg 
that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, 
chamber, store-house, and garret; where you can see so 

5 necessary a thing as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a 
thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your 
respects to the fire that cooks your dinner and the oven, 
that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and 
utensils are the chief ornaments ; where the washing is not 

lo put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are 
sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when 
the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether 
the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. 
A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, 

15 and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back 
without seeing some of its inhabitants ; where to be a guest 
is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to 
be carefully excluded from seven-eighths of it, shut up in a 
particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there, — 

20 in solitary confinement. Nowadays the host does not ad- 
mit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one 
for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality 
is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There 
is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design 

25 to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many a 
man's premises, and might have been legally ordered off, 
but I am not aware that I have been in many men's houses. 
I might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who hved 
simply in such a house as I have described, if I were going 

30 their way ; but backing out of a modern palace will be all 
that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one. 

It would seem as if the very language of our parlors 
would lose all its nerve and degenerate into parlaver° 



HO USE- WA RMIN G 247 

wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, 
and its metaphors and tropes ° are necessarily so far- 
fetched, through slides and dumb-waiters, as it were ; 
in other words, the parlor is so far from the kitchen and 
workshop. The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, 5 
commonly. As if only the savage dwelt near enough 
to Nature and Truth to borrow a trope from them. How 
can the scholar, who dwells away in the NorthWest 
Territory or the Isle of Man, tell what is parliamentary in 
the kitchen ? lo 

However, only one or two of my guests were bold enough 
to stay and eat a hasty-pudding with me ; but when they 
saw that crisis approaching they beat a hasty retreat 
rather, as if it would shake the house to its foundations. 
Nevertheless, it stood through a great many hasty-pud- 15 
dings. 

I did not plaster till it was freezing weather. I brought 
over some whiter and cleaner sand for this purpose from 
the opposite shore of the pond in a boat, a sort of convey- 
ance which would have tempted me to go much farther if 20 
necessary. My house had in the meanwhile been shingled 
down to the ground on every side. In lathing I was pleased 
to be able to send home each nail with a single blow of the 
hammer, and it was my ambition to transfer the plaster 
from the board to the wall neatly and rapidly. I remember 25 
the story of a conceited fellow, who, in fine clothes, was 
wont to lounge about the village once, giving advice to work- 
men. Venturing one day to substitute deeds for words, 
he turned up his cuffs, seized a plasterer's board, and 
having loaded his trowel without mishap, with a compla- 30 
cent look toward the lathing overhead, made a bold gesture 
thitherward ; and straightway, to his complete discomfi- 
ture, received the whole contents in his ruffled bosom. I 



248 WALDEN 

admired anew the economy and convenience of plastering, 
which so effectually shuts out the cold and takes a hand- 
some finish, and I learned the various casualties to which 
the plasterer is liable. I was surprised to see how thirsty 

5 the bricks were which drank up all the moisture in my 
plaster before I had smoothed it, and how many pailfuls 
of water it takes to christen a new hearth. I had the pre- 
vious winter made a small quantity of lime by burning the 
shells of the Unio fluviatilis° which our river affords, for 

lothe sake of the experiment; so that I knew where my 
materials came from. I might have got good limestone 
within a mile or two and burned it myself, if I had cared 
to do so. 

The pond had in the meanwhile skimmed over in the 

15 shadiest and shallowest coves, some days or even weeks 
before the general freezing. The first ice is especially 
interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, 
and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for exam- 
ining the bottom where it is shallow; for you can lie at 

20 your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect 
on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your 
leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture be- 
hind a glass, and the water is necessarily always smooth 
then. There are many furrows in the sand where some 

25 creature has travelled about and doubled on its tracks ; 
and, for wrecks, it is strewn with the cases of caddis 
worms ° made of minute grains of white quartz. Perhaps 
these have creased it, for you find some of their cases in 
the furrows, though they are deep and broad for them to 

30 make. But the ice itself is the object of most interest, 
though you must improve the earliest opportunity to 
study it, If you examine it closely the morning after it 



HOUSE-WARMING 249 

freezes, you find that the greater part of the bubbles, 
which at first appeared to be within it, are against its 
under surface, and that more are continually rising from 
the bottom ; while the ice is as yet comparatively solid 
and dark, that is, you see the water through it. These 5 
bubbles are from an eightieth to an eighth of an inch in 
diameter, very clear and beautiful, and you see your face 
reflected in them through the ice. There may be thirty 
or forty of them to a square inch. There are also already 
within the ice narrow oblong perpendicular bubbles about 10 
half an inch long, sharp cones with the apex upward; 
or oftener, if the ice is quite fresh, minute spherical bubbles 
one directly above another, like a string of beads. But 
these within the ice are not so numerous nor obvious as 
those beneath. I sometimes used to cast stones to try 15 
the strength of the ice, and those which broke through 
carried in air with them, which formed very large and con- 
spicuous white bubbles beneath. One day when I came to 
the same place forty-eight hours afterward, I found that 
those large bubbles were still perfect, though an inch more 20 
of ice had formed, as I could see distinctly by the seam 
in the edge of a cake. But as the last two days had been 
very warm, like an Indian summer, the ice was not now 
transparent, showing the dark green color of the water, 
and the bottom, but opaque and whitish or gray, and 25 
though twice as thick was hardly stronger than before, 
for the air bubbles had greatly expanded under this heat 
and run together, and lost their regularity ; they were no 
longer one directly over another, but often like silvery 
coins poured from a bag, one overlapping another, or in 30 
thin flakes, as if occupying slight cleavages. The beauty 
of the ice was gone, and it was too late to study the bottom. 
Being curious to know what position my great bubbles 



250 WALDEN 

occupied with regard to the new ice, I broke out a cake 
containing a middhng sized one, and turned it bottom 
upward. The new ice had formed around and under the 
bubble, so that it was included between the two ices. It 

5 was wholly in the lower ice, but close against the upper, 
and was flattish, or perhaps slightly lenticular, with a 
rounded edge, a quarter of an inch deep by four inches in 
diameter ; and I was surprised to find that directly under 
the bubble the ice was melted with great regularity in the 

lo form of a saucer reversed, to the height of five-eighths of 
an inch in the middle, leaving a thin partition there between 
the water and the bubble, hardly an eighth of an inch 
thick; and in many places the small bubbles in this 
partition had burst out downward, and probably there was 

15 no ice at all under the largest bubbles, which were a foot 
in diameter. I inferred that the infinite number of minute 
bubbles which I had first seen against the under surface 
of the ice were now frozen in likewise, and that each, in its 
degree, had operated like a burning glass on the ice beneath 

20 to melt and rot it. These are the little air-guns which 
contribute to make the ice crack and whoop. 

At length the winter set in in good earnest, just as I had 
finished plastering, and the wind began to howl around the 
house as if it had not had permission to do so till then. 

25 Night after night the geese came lumbering in in the dark 
with a clangor and a whistling of wings, even after the 
ground was covered with snow, some to alight in Walden, 
and some flying low over the woods toward Fair Haven, 
bound for Mexico. Several times, when returning from 

30 the village at ten or eleven o'clock at night, I heard the 
tread of a flock of geese, or else ducks, on the dry leaves in 
the woods by a pond-hole behind my dweUing, where they 



HO USE- WARMING 251 

had come up to feed, and the faint honk or quack of their 
leader as they hurried off. In 1845 Walden froze entirely 
over for the first time on the night of the 22d of December, 
Flint's and other shallower ponds and the river having 
been frozen ten days or more ; in '46, the 16th ; in '49, 5 
about the 31st; and in '50, about the 27th of December; 
in '52, the 5th of January; in '53, the 31st of December. 
The snow had already covered the ground since the 25th 
of November, and surrounded me suddenly with the 
scenery of winter. I withdrew yet farther into my shell, 10 
and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house 
and within my breast. My employment out of doors now 
was to collect the dead wood in the forest, bringing it in my 
hands or on my shoulders, or sometimes trailing a dead 
pine tree under each arm to my shed. An old forest fence 15 
which had seen its best days was a great haul for me. I 
sacrificed it to Vulcan, ° for it was past serving the god 
Terminus. ° How much more interesting an event is that 
man's supper who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, 
nay, you might say, steal, the fuel to cook it with ! His 20 
bread and meat are sweet. There are enough fagots and 
waste food of all kinds in the forests of most of our towns 
to support many fires, but which at present warm none, 
and, some think, hinder the growth of the young wood. 
There was also the drift-wood of the pond. In the course 25 
of the summer I had discovered a raft of pitch-pine logs 
with the bark on, pinned together by the Irish when the 
railroad was built. This I hauled up partly on the shore. 
After soaking two years and then lying high six months it 
was perfectly sound, waterlogged past drying. I amused 30 
myself one winter day with sliding this piecemeal across the 
pond, nearly half a mile, skating behind with one end 
of a log fifteen feet long on my shoulder, and the other 



252 WALDEN 

on the ice; or I tied several logs together with a birch 
withe, and then, with a longer birch or alder which had a 
hook at the end, dragged them across. Though completely 
waterlogged and almost as heavy as lead, they not only 
5 burned long, but made a very hot fire ; nay, I thought that 
they burned better for the soaking, as if the pitch, being 
confined by the water, burned longer as in a lamp. 

Gilpin, ° in his account of the forest borders of England, 
says that ''the encroachments of trespassers, and the 

lo houses and fences thus raised on the borders of the forest," 
were ''considered as great nuisances by the old forest law, 
and were severely punished under the name of purpres- 
tures, as tending ad terror em ferarum — ad nocumentum 
forestae, etc.," to the frightening of the game and the detri- 

15 ment of the forest. But I was interested in the preserva- 
tion of the venison and the vert° more than the hunters or 
wood-choppers, and as much as though I had been the 
Lord Walden himself ; and if any part was burned, though 
I burned it myself by accident, I grieved with a grief that 

20 lasted longer and was more inconsolable than that of the 
proprietors ; nay, I grieved when it was cut down by the 
proprietors themselves. I would that our farmers when 
they cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old 
Romans did when they came to thin, or let in the light to, 

25 a consecrated grove {lucum conlucare), that is, would be- 
lieve that it is sacred to some god. The Roman made an 
expiatory offering, and prayed. Whatever god or goddess 
thou art to whom this grove is sacred, be propitious to me, 
my family, and children, etc. 

30 It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood 
even in this age and in this new country, a value more 
permanent and universal than that of gold. After all our 
discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. 



HO USE- WA RMIN G 253 

It is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman 
ancestors. If they made their bows of it, we make our 
gun-stocks of it. Michaux,° more than thirty years ago, 
says that the price of wood for fuel in New York and 
Philadelphia ''nearly equals, and sometimes exceeds, that 5 
of the best woods in Paris, though this immense capital an- 
nually requires more than three hundred thousand cords, 
and is surrounded to the distance of three hundred miles 
by cultivated plains." In this town the price of wood 
rises almost steadily, and the only question is, how much ic 
higher it is to be this year than it was the last. Mechanics 
and tradesmen who come in person to the forest on no 
other errand, are sure to attend the wood auction, and even 
pay a high price for the privilege of gleaning after the 
wood-chopper. It is now many years that men have re- 15 
sorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts ; 
the New Englander and the New Hollander, ° the Parisian 
and the Celt, the farmer and Robinhood,° Goody Blake and 
Harry Gill,° in most parts of the world the prince and the 
peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still 20 
a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their 
food. Neither could I do without them. 

Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affec- 
tion. I love to have mine before my window, and the 
more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work. 25 
I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by 
spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I 
played about the stumps which I had got out of my bean- 
field. As my driver prophesied when I was ploughing, they 
warmed me twice, onCe while I was splitting them, and 30 
again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give 
but more heat. As for the axe, I was advised to get the 
village blacksmith to "jump " it ; but I jumped him, and, 



254 WALDEN 

putting a hickory helve from the woods into it, made it do. 
If it was dull, it was at least hung true. 

A few pieces of fat pine were a great treasure. It 
is interesting to remember how much of this food for fire 

5 is still concealed in the bowels of the earth. In previous 
years I have often gone ''prospecting" over some bare 
hillside, where a pitch-pine wood had formerly stood, and 
got out the fat pine roots. They are almost indestructible. 
Stumps thirty or forty years old, at least, will still be sound 

lo at the core, though the sap-wood has all become vegetable 
mould, as appears by the scales of the thick bark forming 
a ring level with the earth four or five inches distant 
from the heart. With axe and shovel you explore this 
mine, and follow the marrowy store, yellow as beef tallow, 

IS or as if you had struck on a vein of gold, deep into the 
earth. But commonly I kindled my fire with the dry 
leaves of the forest, which I had stored up in my shed 
before the snow came. Green hickory finely split makes 
the wood-chopper's kindlings, when he has a camp in the 

20 woods. Once in a while I got a little of this. When the 
villagers were lighting their fires beyond the horizon, I too 
gave notice to the various wild inhabitants of Walden vale, 
by a smoky streamer from my chimney, that I was 
awake. — 

25 Light-winged Smoke, ° Icarian bird, 

Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight, 
Lark without song, and messenger of dawn. 
Circling above the hamlets as thy nest ; 
Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form 

30 Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts ; 

By night star- veiling, and by day 
Darkening the light and blotting out the sun; 
Go thou my incense upward from this hearth. 
And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame. 



HOUSE-WARMING 255 

Hard green wood just cut, though I used but Httle 
of that, answered my purpose better than any other. 
I sometimes left a good fire when I went to take a walk in 
the winter afternoon ; and when I returned, three or four 
hours afterward, it would be still alive and glowing. My 5 
house was not empty though I was gone. It was as if I 
had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It was I and Fire 
that lived there ; and commonly my housekeeper proved 
trustworthy. One day, however, as I was splitting wood, 
I thought that I would just look in at the window and see if 10 
the house was not on fire ; it was the only time I remember 
to have been particularly anxious on this score ; so I looked 
and saw that a spark had caught my bed, and I went in and 
extinguished it when it had burned a place as big as my 
hand. But my house occupied so sunny and sheltered a 15 
position, and its roof was so low, that I could afford to let 
the fire go out in the middle of almost any winter day. 

The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third 
potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair 
left after plastering and of brown paper; for even the 20 
wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as man, 
and they survive the winter only because they are so care- 
ful to secure them. Some of my friends spoke as if I 
was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze myself. The 
animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his own 25 
body in a sheltered place ; but man, having discovered fire, 
boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms 
that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which 
he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, 
maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by 30 
means of windows, even admit the light, and with a lamp 
lengthen out the day. Thus he goes a step or two beyond 
instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts. Though, 



256 WALDEN 

when I had been exposed to the rudest blasts a long time, 
my whole body began to grow torpid, when I reached the 
genial atmosphere of my house I soon recovered my facul- 
ties and prolonged my life. But the most luxuriously 
5 housed has little to boast of in this respect, nor need we 
trouble ourselves to speculate how the human race may 
be at last destroyed. It would be easy to cut their 
threads any time with a little sharper blast from the north. 
We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows; 

lo but a little colder Friday, or greater snow, would put a 
period to man's existence on the globe. 

The next winter I used a small cooking-stove for 
economy, since I did not own the forest ; but it did not 
keep fire so well as the open fireplace. Cooking was then, 

15 for the most part, no longer a poetic, but merely a chemic 
process. It will soon be forgotten, in these days of stoves, 
that we used to roast potatoes in the ashes, after the Indian 
fashion. The stove not only took up room and scented 
the house, but it concealed the fire, and I felt as if I had lost 

20 a companion. You can always see a face in the fire. The 
laborer, looking into it at evening, purifies his thoughts 
of the dross and earthiness ^^ hich they have accumulated 
during the day. But I could no longer sit and look into 
the fire, and the pertinent words of a poet recurred to me 

25 with new force : — 

"Never, bright flame, may be denied to me 
Thy dear, life imaging, close sympathy. 
What but my hopes shot upward e'er so bright ? 
What but my fortunes sunk so low in night ? 

30 Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall, 

Thou who are welcomed and beloved by all ? 
Was thy existence then too fanciful 
For our life's common light, who are so dull ? 



HOUSE-WARMING 257 

Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold 
With our congenial souls ? secrets too bold ? 
Well, we are safe and strong, for now we sit 
Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit. 
Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire 
Warms feet and hands — nor does to more aspire: 
By whose compact utilitarian heap 
The present may sit down and go to sleep. 
Nor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked. 
And with us by the unequal light of the old wood 
fire talked." 



FORMER INHABITANTS ; AND WINTER 
VISITORS 

I WEATHERED some merry snow-storms, and spent 
some cheerful winter evenings by my fireside, while the 
snow whirled wildly without, and even the hooting of the 
owl was hushed. For many weeks I met no one in my 

5 walks but those who came occasionally to cut wood and 
sled it to the village. The elements, however, abetted me 
in making a path through the deepest snow in the woods, 
for when I had once gone through the wind blew the oak 
leaves into my tracks, where they lodged, and by absorbing 

lo the rays of the sun melted the snow, and so not only 
made a dry bed for my feet, but in the night their dark line 
was my guide. For human society I was obliged to conjure 
up the former occupants of these woods. Within the mem- 
ory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house 

15 stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, 
and the woods which border it were notched and dotted 
here and there with their little gardens and dwellings, 
though it was then much more shut in the forest than now. 
In some places, within my own remembrance, the pines 

20 would scrape both sides of a chaise at once, and women and 
children who were compelled to go this way to Lincoln alone 
and on foot did it with fear, and often ran a good part of 
the distance. Though mainly but a humble route to neigh- 
boring villages, or for the woodman's team, it once amused 

25 the traveller more than now by its variety, and lingered 

258 



FORMER INHABITANTS 259 

longer in his memory. Where now firm open fields stretch 
from the village to the woods, it then ran through a maple 
swamp on a foundation of logs, the remnants of which, 
doubtless, still underlie the present dusty highway, from 
the Stratten, now the Alms House Farm, to Brister's Hill. 5 

East of my bean-field, across the road, lived Cato 
Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentle- 
man of Concord village, who built his slave a house, 
and gave him permission to live in Walden Woods ; — 
Cato, not Uticensis, but Concordiensis. Some say that he lo 
was a Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember his 
little patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till 
he should be old and need them; but a younger and 
whiter speculator got them at last. He too, however, occu- 
pies an equally narrow house at present. Cato's half- 15 
obliterated cellar hole still remains, though known to few, 
being concealed from the traveller by a fringe of pines. It 
is now filled with the smooth sumach {Rhus glabra), 
and one of the earliest species of golden-rod {Solidago 
stricta) grows there luxuriantly! 20 

Here, by the very corner of my field, still nearer to 
town, Zilpha,° a colored woman, had her little house, 
\vhere she spun linen for the townsfolk, making the Walden 
Woods ring with her shrill singing, for she had a loud and 
notable voice. At length, in the war of 1812, her dwelling 25 
was set on fire by English soldiers, prisoners on parole, when 
she was away, and her cat and dog and hens were all burned 
up together. She led a hard life, and somewhat inhumane. 
One old frequenter of these woods remembers, that as he 
passed her house one noon he heard her muttering to 30 
herself over her gurgling pot, — "Ye are all bones, bones ! " 
I have seen bricks amid the oak copse there. 

Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister's Hill, 



260 WALDEN 

lived Brister Freeman,° "a handy Negro/' slave of Squire 
Cummings once, — there where grow still the apple-trees 
which Brister planted and tended; large old trees now, 
but their fruit still wild and ciderish to my taste. Not 
5 long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying- 
ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of 
some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Con- 
cord, — where he is styled "Sippio Brister," — Scipio 
Africanus he had some title to be called, — "a man of 

lo color," as if he were discolored. It also told me, with 
staring emphasis, when he died ; which was but an indirect 
way of informing me that he ever lived. With him dwelt 
Fenda, his hospitable wife, who told fortunes, yet pleas- 
antly, — large, round, and black, blacker than any of the 

15 children of night, such a dusky orb as never rose on Concord 
before or since. 

Farther down the hill, on the left, on the old road in the 
woods, are marks of some homestead of the Stratten family ; 
whose orchard once covered all the slope of Brister's Hill, 

20 but was long since killed out by pitch-pines, excepting a 
few stumps, whose old roots furnish still the wild stocks 
of many a thrifty village tree. 

Nearer yet to town, you come to Breed's location, ° 
on the other side of the way, just on the edge of the wood ; 

25 ground famous for the pranks of a demon not distinctly 
named in old mythology, who has acted a prominent and 
astounding part in our New England life, and deserves, as 
much as any mythological character, to have his biography 
written one day ; who first comes in the guise of a friend or 

30 hired man, and then robs and murders the whole family, — 
New England Rum. But history must not yet tell the 
tragedies enacted here ; let time intervene in some meas- 
ure to assuage and lend an azure tint to them. Here the 



FORMER INHABITANTS 261 

most indistinct and dubious tradition says that once a 
tavern stood; the well the same, which tempered the 
traveller's beverage and refreshed his steed. Here then 
men saluted one another, and heard and told the news, and 
went their ways again. 5 

Breed's hut was standing only a dozen years ago, 
though it had long been unoccupied. It was about 
the size of mine. It was set on fire by mischievous boys, 
one Election night, if I do not mistake. I lived on the 
edge of the village then, and had just lost myself over lo 
Davenant's Gondibert,° that winter that I labored with 
a lethargy, — which, by the way, I never knew whether 
to regard as a family complaint, having an uncle who 
goes to sleep shaving himself, and is obliged to sprout 
potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in order to keep awake and 15 
keep the Sabbath, or as the consequence of my attempt to 
read Chalmers' collection° of English poetry without skip- 
ping. It fairly overcame my Nervii.° I had just sunk 
my head on this when the bells rung fire, and in hot haste 
the engines rolled that way, led by a straggling troop of 20 
men and boys, and I among the foremost, for I had 
leaped the brook. We thought it was far south over the 
woods, — we who had run to fires before, — barn, shop, 
or dwelling-house, or all together. ''It's Baker's barn," 
cried one. ''It is the Codman Place," affirmed another. 25 
And then fresh sparks went up above the wood, as if 
the roof fell in, and we all shouted, "Concord to the 
rescue ! " Wagons shot past with furious speed and 
crushing loads, bearing perchance, among the rest, the 
agent of the Insurance Company, who was bound to go, 30 
however far; and ever and anon the engine bell tinkled 
behind, more slow and sure, and rearmost of all, as it was 
afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave 



262 WALL EN 

the alarm. Thus we kept on Hke true ideahsts, rejecting 
the evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we 
heard the crackling and actually felt the heat of the fire 
from over the wall, and realized, alas ! that we were there. 

5 The very nearness of the fire but cooled our ardor. At 
first we thought to throw a frog-pond on to it : but con- 
cluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and so worthless. 
So we stood round our engine, jostled one another, ex- 
pressed our sentiments through speaking trumpets, or in 

lo lower tone referred to the great conflagrations which the 
world has witnessed, including Bascom's shop, and, 
between ourselves, we thought that, were we there in 
season with our 'Hub," and a full frog-pond by, we could 
turn that threatened last and universal one into another 

15 flood. We finally retreated without doing any mischief, 
— returned to sleep and Gondibert. But as for Gondi- 
bert I would except that passage in the preface about wit 
being the soul's powder, — "but most of mankind are 
strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder." 

20 It chanced that I walked that way across the fields 
the following night, about the same hour, and hear- 
ing a low moaning at this spot, I drew near in the dark, 
and discovered the only survivor of the family that I 
know, the heir of both its virtues and its vices, who alone 

25 was interested in this burning, lying on his stomach and 
looking over the cellar wall at the still smouldering cinders 
beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. He had 
been working far off in the river meadow^s all day, and 
had improved the first moments that he could call his 

30 own to visit the home of his fathers and his youth. He 
gazed into the cellar from all sides and points of view by 
turns, always lying down to it, as if there was some 
treasure, which he remembered, concealed between 



FORMER INHABITANTS 263 

the stones, where there was absolutely nothing but a 
heap of bricks and ashes. The house being gone, he 
looked at what there was left. He was soothed by 
the sympathy which my mere presence implied, and 
showed me, as well as the darkness permitted, where s 
the well was covered up; which, thank Heaven, could 
never be burned; and he groped long about the wall 
to find the well-sweep which his father had cut and 
mounted, feeling for the iron hook or staple by which 
a burden had been fastened to the heavy end, — all that lo 
he could now cling to, — to convince me that it was no 
common "rider." I felt it, and still remark it almost 
daily in my walks, for by it hangs the history of a family. 

Once more, on the left, where are seen the well and 
lilac bushes by the wall, in the now open field, lived 15 
Nutting and Le Grosse. But to return toward Lincoln. 

Farther in the woods than any of these, where the 
road approaches nearest to the pond, Wyman the potter 
squatted, and furnished his townsmen with earthern 
ware, and left descendants to succeed him. Neither 20 
were they rich in worldly goods, holding the land by 
sufferance while they lived ; and there often the sheriff 
came in vain to collect the taxes, and ''attached a chip," 
for form's sake, as I have read in his accounts, there 
being nothing else that he could lay his hands on. One 25 
day in midsummer, when I was hoeing, a man who was 
carrying a load of pottery to market stopped his horse 
against my field and inquired concerning Wyman the 
younger. He had long ago bought a potter's wheel of 
him, and wished to know what had become of him. I had 30 
read of the potter's clay and wheel in Scripture, but it had 
never occurred to me that the pots we use were not such 
as had come down unbroken from those days, or grown 



264 WALDEN 

on trees like gourds somewhere, and I was pleased to hear 
that so fictile an art was ever practised in my neigh- 
borhood. 

The last inhabitant of these woods before me was 

5 an Irishman, Hugh Quoil (if I have spelt his name with 
coil° enough), who occupied Wyman's tenement, — Col. 
Quoil, he was called. Rumor said that he had been a 
soldier at Waterloo. If he had lived I should have made 
him fight his battles over again. His trade here was that 

lo of a ditcher. Napoleon went to St. Helena° ; Quoil came 
to Walden Woods. All I know of him is tragic. He 
was a man of manners, like one who had seen the world, 
and was capable of more civil speech than you could 
well attend to. He wore a great coat in midsummer, 

IS being affected with the trembling delirium, and his 
face was the color of carmine. He died in the road at 
the foot of Brister's Hill shortly after I came to the 
woods, so that I have not remembered him as a neighbor. 
Before his house was pulled down, when his comrades 

20 avoided it as "an unlucky castle," I visited it. There 
lay his old clothes curled up by use, as if they were him- 
self, upon his raised plank bed. His pipe lay broken on 
the hearth, instead of a bowl broken at the fountain. ° 
The last could never have been the symbol of his death, 

25 for he confessed to me that though he had heard of 
Brister's Spring, he had never seen it; and soiled cards, 
kings of diamonds, spades, and hearts, were scattered 
over the floor. One black chicken which the adminis- 
trator could not catch, black as night and as silent, 

30 not even croaking, awaiting Reynard, ° still went to 
roost in the next apartment. In the rear there was the 
dim outline of a garden, which had been planted but 
had never received its first hoeing, owing to those terrible 



FORMER INHABITANTS 265 

shaking fits, though it was now harvest time. It was 
overrun with Roman wormwood and beggar-ticks, which 
last stuck to my clothes for all fruit. The skin of a wood- 
chuck was freshly stretched upon the back of the house, 
a trophy of his last Waterloo ; but no warm cap or mittens 5 
would he want more. 

Now only a dent in the earth marks the site of these 
dwellings, with buried cellar stones, and strawberries, 
raspberries, thimble-berries, hazel-bushes, and sumachs 
growing in the sunny sward there ; some pitch-pine or lo 
gnarled oak occupies what was the chimney nook, and a 
sweet-scented black-birch, perhaps, waves where the 
door-stone was. Sometimes the well dent is visible, 
where once a spring oozed ; now dry and tearless grass ; 
or it was covered deep, — not to be discovered till some 15 
late day, — with a fiat stone under the sod, when the last 
of the race departed. What a sorrowful act must that be, 
— the covering up of wells ! coincident with the opening 
of wells of tears. These cellar dents, like deserted fox 
burrows, old holes, are all that is left where once were 20 
the stir and bustle of human life, and "fate, free-will, 
foreknowledge absolute,^' ° in some form and dialect or 
other were by turns discussed. But all I can learn of 
their conclusions amounts to just this, that ''Cato and 
Brister pulled wool ; " which is about as edifying as the 25 
history of more famous schools of philosophy. 

Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the 
door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet- 
scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing 
traveller; planted and tended once by children's hands, 30 
in front-yard plots, — now standing by wall-sides in 
retired pastures, and giving place to new-rising forests ; — 
the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family. Little 



266 WALDEN 

did the dusky children think that the puny sUp with its 
two eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the 
shadow of the house and daily watered, would root itself so, 
and outlive them, and house itself in the rear that shaded 

5 it, and grown man's garden and orchard, and tell their 
story faintly to the lone wanderer a half century after 
they had grown up and died, — blossoming as fair, and 
smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. I mark its still 
tender, civil, cheerful, lilac colors. 

lo But this small village, germ of something more, why 
did it fail while Concord keeps its ground? Were there 
no natural advantages, — no water privileges, ° forsooth? 
Ay, the deep Walden Pond and cool. Brister's Spring, — 
privilege to drink long and healthy draughts at these, 

15 all unimproved by these men but to dilute their glass. 
They were universally a thirsty race. Might not the 
basket, stable-broom, mat-making, corn-parching, linen- 
spinning, and pottery business have thrived here, making 
the wilderness to blossom like the rose,° and a numerous 

20 posterity have inherited the land of their fathers ? The 
sterile soil would at least have been proof against a low- 
land degeneracy. Alas ! how little does the" memory 
of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty fo the 
landscape ! Again, perhaps, Nature will try, with me 

25 for a first settler, and my house raised last spring to be 
the oldest in the hamlet. 

I am not aware that any man has ever built on the 
spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built 
on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are 

30 ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil is blanched 
and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary 
the earth itself will be destroyed. With such remi- 
niscences I repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep. 



FORMER INHABITANTS 267 

At this season I seldom had a visitor. When the snow 
lay deepest no wanderer ventured near my house for a 
week or fortnight at a time, but there I lived as snug as a 
meadow mouse, or as cattle and poultry which are said 
to have survived for a long time buried in drifts, even 5 
without food; or like that early settler's family in the 
town of Sutton, in this state, whose cottage was com- 
pletely covered by the great snow of 1717 when he was 
absent, and an Indian found it only by the hole which 
the chimney's breath made in the drift, and so relieved the 10 
family. But no friendly Indian concerned himself about 
me ; nor needed he, for the master of the house was at 
home. The Great Snow ! How cheerful it is to hear 
of ! When the farmers could not get to the woods and 
swamps with their teams, and were obliged to cut down 15 
the shade trees before their houses, and when the crust 
was harder cut off the trees in the swamps ten feet from 
the ground, as it appeared the next spring. 

In the deepest snows, the path which I used from the 
highway to my house, about half a mile long, might have 20 
been represented by a meandering dotted line, with wide 
intervals between the dots. For a week of even weather 
I took^ exactly the same number of steps, and of the same 
length, coming and going, stepping deliberately and 
with the precision of a pair of dividers in my own deep 25 
tracks, — to such routine the winter reduces us, — yet 
often they were filled with heaven's own blue. But no 
weather interfered fatally with my walks, or rather my 
going abroad, for I frequently tramped eight or ten 
miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment 30 
with a beech-tree, or a yellow-birch, or an old acquaint- 
ance among the pines ; when the ice and snow causing 
their limbs to droop, and so sharpening their tops, had 



268 WALDEN 

changed the pines into fir-trees; wading to the tops of 
the highest hills when the snow was nearly two feet 
deep on a level, and shaking down another snow-storm 
on my head at every step; or sometimes creeping and 
5 floundering thither on my hands and knees, when the 
hunters had gone into winter quarters. One afternoon 
I amused myself by watching a barred owl {Strix nebu- 
losa) sitting on one of the lower dead limbs of a white- 
pine, close to the trunk, in broad daylight, I standing 

lo within a rod of him. He could hear me when I moved 
and crouched the snow with my feet, but could not 
plainly see me. When I made most noise he would 
stretch out his neck, and erect his neck feathers, and open 
his eyes wide; but their lids soon fell, and he began to 

15 nod. I too felt a slumberous influence after watching 
him half an hour, as he sat thus with his eyes half open, 
like a cat, winged brother of the cat. There was only a 
narrow slit left between their lids, by which he preserved 
a peninsular relation to me; thus, with half -shut eyes, 

20 looking out from the land of dreams, and endeavoring to 
realize me, vague object or mote that interrupted his 
visions. At length, on some louder noise or my nearer 
approach, he would grow uneasy and sluggishly turn about 
on his perch, as if impatient at having his dreams dis- 

25 turbed ; and when he launched himself off and flapped 
through the pines, spreading his wings to unexpected 
breadth, I could not hear the slightest sound from them. 
Thus, guided amid the pine boughs rather by a delicate 
sense of their neighborhood than by sight, feeling his 

30 twilight way as it were with his sensitive pinions, he found 
a new perch, where he might in peace await the dawning 
of his day. 

As I walked over the long causeway made for the 



FORMER INHABITANTS 269 

railroad through the meadows, I encountered many 
a blustering and nipping wind, for nowhere has it freer 
play ; and when the frost had smitten me on one cheek, 
heathen as I was, I turned to it the other also.° Nor 
was it much better by the carriage road from Brister's 5 
Hill. For I came to town still, hke a friendly Indian, 
when the contents of the broad open fields were all piled 
up between the walls of the Walden road, and half an hour 
sufficed to obUterate the tracks of the last traveller. 
And when I returned new drifts would have formed, through 10 
which I floundered, where the busy north-west wind 
had been depositing the powdery snow round a sharp 
angle in the road, and not a rabbit's track, nor even the 
fine print, the small type, of a meadow mouse was to be 
seen. Yet I rarely failed to find, even in mid-winter, 15 
some warm and springy swamp where the grass and the 
skunk-cabbage still put forth with perennial verdure, 
and some hardier bird occasionally awaited the return of 
spring. 

Sometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when I returned 20 
from my walk at evening I crossed the deep tracks of a 
wood-chopper leading from my door, and found his pile of 
whittUngs on the hearth, and my house filled with the 
odor of his pipe. Or on a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced 
to be at home, I heard the crouching of the snow made by 25 
the step of a long-headed farmer, who from far through 
the woods sought my house, to have a social ''crack"°; 
one of the few of his vocation who are ''men on their 
farms"; who donned a frock instead of a professor's 
gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of church 30 
or state as to haul a load of manure from his barn-yard. 
We talked of rude and simple times, when men sat about 
large fires in cold bracing weather, with clear heads ; and 



270 WALDEN 

when other dessert failed, we tried our teeth on many a 

nut which wise squirrels have long since abandoned, for 

those which have the thickest shells are commonly empty. 

The one who came from farthest to my lodge, through 

5 deepest snows and most dismal tempests, was a poet.° 
A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philoso- 
pher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, 
for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his 
comings and goings? His business calls him out at all 

lo hours, even when doctors sleep. We made that small 
house ring with boisterous mirth and resound with the 
murmur of much sober talk, making amends then to 
Walden vale for the long silences. Broadway was still 
and deserted in comparison. At suitable intervals there 

15 were regular salutes of laughter, which might have been 
referred indifferently to the last uttered or the forth- 
coming jest. We made many a "bran new'' theory of 
life over a thin dish of gruel, which combined the ad- 
vantages of conviviality with the clear-headedness which 

20 philosophy requires. 

I should not forget that during my last winter at the 
pond there was another welcome visitor, ° who at one time 
came through the village, through snow and rain and 
darkness, till he saw m}^ lamp through the trees, and 

25 shared with me some long winter evenings. One of the 
last of the philosophers, — Connecticut gave him to the 
world, — he peddled first her wares, afterwards, as he 
declares, his brains. These he peddles still, prompting 
God and disgracing man, bearing for fruit his brain only, 

30 like the nut its kernel. I think that he must be the man of 
the most faith of any alive. His words and attitude al- 
ways suppose a better state of things than other men are 
acquainted with, and he will be the last man to be disap- 



FORMER INHABITANTS 271 

pointed as the ages revolve. He has no venture in the 
present. But though comparatively disregarded now, 
when his day comes, laws unsuspected by most will take 
effect, and masters of families and rulers will come to him 
for advice. — S 

" How blind that cannot see serenity !" 

A true friend of man; almost the only friend of human 
progress. An Old Mortality, ° say rather an Immortalit)^, 
with unwearied patience and faith making plain the image 
engraven in men's bodies, the God of whom they are but lo 
defaced and leaning monuments. With his hospitable 
intellect he embraces children, beggars, insane, and scholars, 
and entertains the thought of all, adding to it commonly 
some breadth and elegance. I think that he should keep 
a caravansary on the world's highway, where philosophers 15 
of all nations might put up, and on his sign should be 
printed, "Entertainment for man, but not for his beast. 
Enter ye that have leisure and a quiet mind, who earnestly 
seek the right road." He is perhaps the sanest man and 
has the fewest crotchets of any I chance to know ; the same 20 
yesterday and to-morrow. Of yore we had sauntered 
and talked, and effectually put the world behind us ; for he 
was pledged to no institution in it, freeborn, ingenuus° 
Whichever way we turned, it seemed that the heavens 
and the earth had met together, since he enhanced the 25 
beauty of the landscape. A blue-robed man, whose fittest 
roof is the overarching sky which reflects his serenity. I do 
not see how he can ever die ; Nature cannot spare him. 

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we 
sat and whittled them, trying our knives, and admiring 30 
the clear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine. We 
waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so 



272 WALDEN 

smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from 
the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and 
went grandly, like the clouds which float through the 
western sky, and the moth er-o '-pearl flocks which some- 
S times form and dissolve there. There we worked, revising 
mythology, rounding a fable here and there, and building 
castles in the air for which earth offered no worthy foun- 
dation. Great Looker ! Great Expecter ! to converse 
with whom was a New England Night's Entertainment. 

lo Ah ! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and 
the old settler I have spoken of, — we three, — it ex- 
panded and racked my little house ; I should not dare to 
say how many pounds' weight there was above the atmos- 
pheric pressure on every circular inch ; it opened its seams 

IS so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter 
to stop the constant leak ; — but I had enough of that 
kind of oakum already picked. 

There was one other with whom I had ''solid seasons," 
long to be remembered, at his house in the village, and 

20 who looked in upon me from time to time ; but I had no 
more for society there. 

There too, as everywhere, I sometimes expected the 
Visitor who never comes. The Vishnu Purana° says, 
''The house-holder is to remain at eventide in his court- 

25 yard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer if he 
pleases, to await the arrival of a guest . " I often performed 
this duty of hospitalit}^ waited long enough to milk a whole 
herd of cows, but did not see the man approaching from 
the town. 



WINTER ANIMALS 

When the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not 
only new and shorter routes to many points, but new views 
from their surfaces of the familiar landscape around them. 
When I crossed Flint's Pond, after it was covered with 
snow, though I had often paddled about and skated over it, 5 
it was so unexpectedly wide and so strange that I could 
think of nothing but Baffin's Bay. The Lincoln hills rose 
up around me at the extremity of a snowy plain, in which 
I did not remember to have stood before ; and the fisher- 
men, at an indeterminable distance over the ice, moving 10 
slowlj^ about with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers, 
or Esquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabulous 
creatures, and I did not know whether they were giants or 
pygmies. I took this course when I went to lecture in 
Lincoln in the evening, travelling in no road and passing 15 
no house between my own hut and the lecture room. 
In Goose Pond, which lay in my way, a colony of musk- 
rats dwelt, and raised their cabins high above the ice, 
though none could be seen abroad when I crossed it. 
Walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with 20 
only shallow and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard, 
where I could walk freely when the snow was nearly two 
feet deep on a level elsewhere and the villagers were con- 
fined to their streets. There, far from the village street, 
and except at very long intervals, from the jingle of sleigh- 25 
bells, I slid and skated, as in avast moose-yard well trodden, 
T 273 



274 WALDEN 

overhung by oak woods and solemn pines bent down with 
snow or bristhng with icicles. 

For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, 
I heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl 
5 indefinitely far ; such a sound as the frozen earth would 
yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua 
vernacula of Walden Wood, and quite familiar to me at last, 
though I never saw the bird while it was making it. I 
seldom opened my door in a winter evening without hearing 

lo it ; Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo, sounded sonorously, and the 
first three syllables accented somewhat like hoio der do; 
or sometimes hoo hoo only. One night in the beginning of 
winter, before the pond froze over, about nine o'clock, I 
was startled by the loud honking of a goose, and, stepping 

15 to the door, heard the sound of their wings like a tempest 
in the woods as they flew low over my house. They passed 
over the pond toward Fair Haven, seemingly deterred 
from settling by my light, their commodore honking all 
the while with a regular beat. Suddenly an unmistakable 

20 cat-owl from very near me, with the most harsh and tre- 
mendous voice I ever heard from any inhabitant of the 
woods, responded at regular intervals to the goose, as if 
determined to expose and disgrace this intruder from 
Hudson's Bay, by exhibiting a greater compass and volume 

25 of voice in a native, and boo-hoo him out of Concord hori- 
zon. What do you mean by alarming the citadel at this 
time of night consecrated to me? Do you think I am 
ever caught napping at such an hour, and that I have not 
got lungs and a larynx as well as yourself? Boo-hoo, 

T,o boo-hoo, boo-hoo! It was one of the most thrilling dis- 
cords I ever heard. And yet, if you had a discriminating 
ear, there were in it the elements of a concord such as these 
plains never saw nor heard. 



WINTER ANIMALS 275 

I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my 
great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were 
restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled 
with flatulency and bad dreams ; or I was waked by the 
cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had 5 
driven a team against my door, and in the morning 
would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and 
a third of an inch wide. 

Sometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the 
snow crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge 10 
or other game, barking raggedly and demoniacall}^ like 
forest dogs, as if laboring with some anxiety, or seeking 
expression, struggling for light and to be dogs outright 
and run freely in the streets ; for if we take the ages into 
our account, may there not be a civilization going on 15 
among brutes as well as men ? They seemed to me to be 
rudimental, burrowing men, still standing on their defence, 
awaiting their transformation. Sometimes one came near 
to my window, attracted by my light, barked a vulpine° 
curse at me, and then retreated. 20 

Usually the red squirrel {Sciurus Hudsonivs) waked 
me in the dawn, coursing over the roof and up and down 
the sides of the house, as if sent out of the woods for this 
purpose. In the course of the winter I threw out half a 
bushel of ears of sweet-corn which had not got ripe, on 25 
to the snow crust by my door, and was amused by watching 
the motions of the various animals which were baited by it. 
In the twilight and the night the rabbits came regularly 
and made a hearty meal. All day long the red squirrels 
came and went, and afforded me much entertainment 30 
by their manoeuvres. One would approach at first warily 
through the shrub-oaks, running over the snow crust by 
fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces 



276 WALDEN 

this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, 
making inconceivable haste with his "trotters," as 
if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, 
but never getting on more than half a rod at a time ; and 
5 then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a 
gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were 
fixed on him, — for all the motions of a squirrel, even in 
the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators 
as much as those of a dancing girl, — wasting more time 

lo in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to 
walk the whole distance, — I never saw one walk, — and 
then suddenly, before you could say Jack Robinson, 
he would be in the top of a young pitch-pine, winding up 
his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing 

15 and talking to all the universe at the same time, — for no 
reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, 
I suspect. At length he would reach the corn, and select- 
ing a suitable ear, brisk about in the same uncertain trigo- 
nometrical way to the topmost stick of my wood-pile, 

20 before my window, where he looked me in the face, and 
there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear from 
time to time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing 
the half -naked cobs about; till at length he grew more 
dainty still and played with his food, tasting only the inside 

25 of the kernel, and the ear, which was held balanced over the 
stick by one paw, slipped from his careless grasp and fell 
to the ground, when he would look over at it with a ludi- 
crous expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting that it had 
life, with a mind not made up whether to get it again, or 

30 a new one, or be off ; now thinking of corn, then listening 
to hear what was in the wind. So the Uttle impudent 
fellow would waste many an ear in a forenoon; till at 
last seizing some longer and plumper one, considerably 



WINTER ANIMALS 277 

bigger than himself, and skilfully balancing it, he would 
set out with it to the woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, 
by the same zigzag course and frequent pauses, scratching 
along with it as if it were too heavy for him and falling all 
the while, making its fall a diagonal between a perpendicu- 5 
lar and horizontal, being determined to put it through at 
any rate ; — a singularly frivolous and whimsical fellow ; — 
and so he would get off with it to where he lived, perhaps 
carry it to the top of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant, 
and I would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the 10 
woods in various directions. 

At length the jays arrive, whose discordant screams 
were lieard long before, as they were warily making their 
approach an eighth of a mile off, and in a stealthy and 
sneaking manner they flit from tree to tree, nearer and 15 
nearer, and pick up the kernels which the squirrels have 
dropped. Then, sitting on a pitch-pine bough, they 
attempt to swallow in their haste a kernel which is too 
big for their throats and chokes them; and after great 
labor they disgorge it, and spend an hour in the endeavor 20 
to crack it by repeated blows with their bills. They were 
manifestly thieves, and I had not much respect for them ; 
but the squirrels, though at first shy, went to work as if 
they were taking what was their own. 

Meanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, 25 
picking up the crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to 
the nearest twig, and, placing them under their claws, 
hammered away at them with their little bills, as if it 
were an insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently reduced 
for their slender throats. A little flock of these titmice 30 
came daily to pick a dinner out of my wood-pile, or the 
crumbs at my door, with faint flitting lisping notes, like 
the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly 



278 WALDEN 

day day day, or more rarely, in spring-like days, a wiry 
summery phe-be from the wood-side. They were so 
familiar that at length one alighted on an armful of wood 
which I was carrying in, and pecked at the sticks without 
5 fear. I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a 
moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt 
that I was more distinguished by that circumstance 
than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. 
The squirrels also grew at last to be quite familiar, and 

lo occasionally stepped upon my shoe, when that was the 
nearest way. 

When the ground was not yet quite covered, and again 
near the end of winter, when the snow was melted on my 
south hillside and about my wood-pile, the partridges came 

IS out of the woods morning and evening to feed there. 
Whichever side you walk in the woods the partridge bursts 
away on whirring wings, jarring the snow from the dry 
leaves and twigs on high, which comes sifting down in the 
sunbeams like golden dust ; for this brave bird is not to 

20 be scared by winter. It is frequently covered up by drifts, 
and, it is said, "sometimes plunges from on wing into the 
soft snow, where it remains concealed for a day or two." 
I used to start them in the open land also, where they had 
come out of the woods at sunset to "bud " the wild apple- 

25 trees. They will come regularly every evening to particu- 
lar trees, where the cunning sportsman lies in wait for 
them, and the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus 
not a little. I am glad that the partridge gets fed, at any 
rate. It is Nature's own bird which lives on buds and diet- 

30 drink. 

In dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, 
I sometimes heard a pack of hounds threading all the 
woods with hounding cry and yelp, unable to resist the 



WINTER ANIMALS 279 

instinct of the chase, and the note of the hunting horn at 
intervals, proving that man was in the rear. The woods 
ring again, and yet no fox bursts forth on to the open level 
of the pond, nor following pack pursuing their Actseon. 
And perhaps at evening I see the hunters returning with a 5 
single brush trailing from their sleigh for a trophy, seeking 
their inn. They tell me that if the fox would remain in the 
bosom of the frozen earth he would be safe, or if he would 
run in a straight line away no fox-hound could overtake 
him ; but, having left his pursuers far behind, he stops to 10 
rest and listen till they come up, and when he runs he 
circles round to his old haunts, where the hunters await 
him.. Sometimes, however, he M^ill run upon a wall many 
rods, and then leap off far to one side, and he appears to 
know that water will not retain his scent. A hunter told 15 
me that he once saw a fox pursued by hounds burst out on 
to Walden when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, 
run part way across, and then return to the same shore. 
Ere long the hounds arrived, but here they lost the scent. 
Sometimes a pack hunting by themselves would pass my 20 
door, and circle round my house, and yelp and hound with- 
out regarding me, as if afflicted by a species of madness, so 
that nothing could divert them from the pursuit. Thus 
they circle until they fall upon the recent trail of a fox, 
for a wise hound will forsake everything else for this. One 25 
day a man came to my hut from Lexington to inquire after 
his hound that made a large track, and had been hunting 
for a week by himself. But I fear that he was not the 
wiser for all I told him, for every time I attempted to 
answer his questions he interrupted me by asking, ''What 30 
do you do here ? " He had lost a dog, but found a man. 

One old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to 
come to bathe in Walden once every year when the 



280 WALDEN 

water was warmest, and at such times looked in upon 
me, told me, that many years ago he took his gun one 
afternoon and went out for a cruise in Walden Woods; 
and as he walked the Wayland road he heard the cry of 

5 hounds approaching, and ere long a fox leaped the wall 
into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the other 
wall out of the road, and his swift bullet had not touched 
him. Some wa}'- behind came an old hound and her 
three pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own account, 

lo and disappeared again in the woods. Late in the after- 
. noon, as he was resting in the thick woods south of Wal- 
den, he heard the voice of the hounds far over toward 
Fair Haven still pursuing the fox; and on they came, 
their hounding cry which made all the woods ring sound- 

15 ing nearer and nearer, now from Well-Meadow, now from 
the Baker Farm. For a long time he stood still and 
listened to their music, so sweet to a hunter's ear, when 
suddenly the fox appeared, threading the solemn aisles 
with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was concealed 

2o by a sympathetic rustle of the leaves, swift and still, 
keeping the ground, leaving his pursuers far behind ; and, 
leaping upon a rock amid the woods, he sat erect and 
listening, with his back to the hunter. For a moment 
compassion restrained the latter's arm; but that was 

25 a short-lived mood, and as quick as thought can follow 
thought his piece was levelled, and lohang! — the fox 
rolling over the rock lay dead on the ground. The hunter 
still kept his place and listened to the hounds. Still on 
they came, and now the near woods resounded through all 

30 their aisles with their demoniac cry. At length the old 
hound burst into view w4th muzzle to the ground, and 
snapping the air as if possessed, and ran directly to the 
rock; but spying the dead fox she suddenly ceased her 



WINTER ANIMALS 281 

hounding, as if struck dumb with amazement, and walked 
round and round him in silence; and one by one her 
pups arrived, and, like their mother, were sobered into 
silence by the mystery. Then the hunter came forward 
and stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved. 5 
They waited in silence while he skinned the fox, then 
followed the brush awhile, and at length turned off into 
the woods again. That evening a Weston Squire came 
to the Concord hunter's cottage to inquire for his hounds, 
and told how for a week they had been hunting on their 10 
own account from Weston Woods. The Concord hunter 
told him what he knew and offered him the skin ; but the 
other declined it and departed. He did not find his hounds 
that night, but the next day learned that they had crossed 
the river and put up at a farm-house for the night, whence, 15 
having been well fed, they took their departure early 
in the morning. 

The hunter who told me this could remember one 
Sam Nutting, ° who used to hunt bears on Fair Haven 
Ledges, and exchange their skins for rum in Concord 20 
village; who told him, even, that he had seen a moose 
there. Nutting had a famous fox-hound named Bur- 
goyne, — he pronounced it Bugine, — which my inform- 
ant used to borrow. In the ''Wast Book,"° of an old 
trader of this town, who was also a captain, town-clerk, 25 
and representative, I find the following entry. Jan. 
18th, 1742-3, "John Melven Cr. by 1 Grey Fox — 2 — 
3 ; " they are not now found here ; and in his ledger, 
Feb. 7th, 1743, Hezekiah Stratton has credit ''by ^ a 
Catt skin — 1 — 4^ ; " of course, a wild-cat, for Stratton 30 
was a sergeant in the old French war, and would not have 
got credit for hunting less noble game. Credit is given 
for deer skins also, and they were daily sold. One man 



282 WALDEN 

still preserves the horns of the last deer that was killed 
in this vicinity, and another has told me the particu- 
lars of the hunt in which his uncle was engaged. The 
hunters were formerly a numerous and merry crew here. 
5 I remember well one gaunt Nimrod who would catch up 
a leaf by the road-side and play a strain on it wilder and 
more melodious, if my memory serves me, than any 
hunting horn. 

At midnight, when there was a moon, I sometimes 

lo met with hounds in my path prowling about the woods, 
which would skulk out of my way, as if afraid, and stand 
silent amid the bushes till I had passed. 

Squirrels and wild mice disputed for my store of nuts. 
There were scores of pitch-pines around my house, from 

15 one to four inches in diameter, which had been gnawed 
by mice the previous winter, — a Norwegian winter for 
them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they were 
obliged to mix a large proportion of pine bark with their 
other diet. These trees were alive and apparently 

20 flourishing at midsummer, and many of them had grown 
a foot, though completely girdled; but after another 
winter such were without exception dead. It is remark- 
able that a single mouse should thus be allowed a whole 
pine tree for its dinner, gnawing round instead of up and 

25 down it ; but perhaps it is necessary in order to thin 
these trees, which are wont to grow up densely. 

The hares {Lepus Americanus) were very familiar. 
One had her form under my house all winter, separated 
from me only by the flooring, and she startled me each 

30 morning by her hasty departure when I began to stir, — 
thump, thump, thump, striking her head against the 
floor timbers in her hurry. They used to come round 
my door at dusk to nibble the potato parings which I had 



WINTER ANIMALS 283 

thrown out, and were so nearly the color of the ground 
that they could hardly be distinguished when still. Some- 
times in the twilight I alternately lost and recovered 
sight of one sitting motionless under my window. When 
I opened my door in the evening, off they would go with 5 
a squeak and a bounce. Near at hand they only excited 
my pity. One evening one sat by my door two paces 
from me, at first trembling with fear, yet unwilling to 
move ; a poor wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged ears 
and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It looked lo 
as if Nature no longer contained the breed of nobler 
bloods, but stood on her last toes. Its large eyes appeared 
young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took a step, 
and lo, away it scud° with an elastic spring over the snow 
crust, straightening its body and its limbs into grace- 15 
ful length, and soon put the forest between me and itself, 
— the wild free venison, asserting its vigor and the dig- 
nity of Nature. Not without reason was its slenderness. 
Such then was its nature. {Lejjus, levipes, light-foot, 
some think.) 20 

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? 
They are among the most simple and indigenous animal 
products; ancient and venerable famihes known to an- 
tiquity as to modern times ; of the very hue and substance 
of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground, — 25 
and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. 
It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a 
rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as 
much to be expected as rustling leaves. The partridge 
and the rabbit are still sure to thriA^e, like true natives 30 
of the soil, whatever revolutions' occur. If the forest is 
cut off, the sprouts and bushes which spring up afford 
them concealment, and they become more numerous 



284 WALDEN 

than ever. That must be a poor country indeed that 
does not support a hare. Our woods teem with them 
both, and around every swamp may be seen the par- 
tridge or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and 
5 horse-hair snares, which some cow-boy tends. 



THE POND IN WINTER 

After a still winter night I awoke with the impres- 
sion that some question had been put to me, which I had 
been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what 
— how — when — where ? But there was dawning 
Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my 5 
broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no 
question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, 
to Nature and daylight. The snow lying deep on the 
earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the 
hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say. Forward ! 10 
Nature puts no question and answers none which we 
mortals ask. She has long- ago taken her resolution. 
''0 Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and 
transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle 
of this universe. The night veils without doubt a part 15 
of this glorious creation ; but day comes to reveal to us 
this great work, which extends from earth even into the 
plains of the ether." 

Then to my morning work. First I take an axe 
and pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream. 20 
After a cold and snowy night it needed a divining rod to 
find it. Every winter the liquid and trembling surface 
of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and 
reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the 
depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will support 25 
the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it 
to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from 
285 



286 WALDEN 

any level field. Like the marmots in the surrounding 
hills, it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three 
months or more. Standing on the snow-covered plain, 
as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through 
S a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window 
under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into 
the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened 
light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright 
sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial 

lowaveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, 
corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the 
inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet as well as over 
our heads. 

Early in the morning, while all things are crisp with 

IS frost, men come with fishing reels and slender lunch, and 
let down their fine lines through the snowy field to take 
pickerel and perch ; wild men, who instinctively follow 
other fashions and trust other authorities than their 
townsmen, and by their goings and comings stitch towns 

20 together in parts whei-e else they would be ripped. They 
sit and eat their luncheon in stout fear-naughts° on the 
dry oak leaves on the shore, as wise in natural lore as 
the citizen is in artificial. They never consulted with 
books, and know and can tell much less than they have 

25 done. The things which they practise are said not 
yet to be known. Here is one fishing for pickerel with 
grown perch for bait. You look into his pail with wonder 
as into a summer pond, as if he kept summer locked up at 
home, or knew where she had retreated. How, pray, 

30 did he get these in midwinter ? O, he got worms out of 
rotten logs since the ground froze, and so he caught them. 
His life passes deeper in Nature than the studies of the 
naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. 



THE POND IN WINTER 287 

The latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife 
in search of insects ; the former lays open logs to their 
core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. 
He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some 
right to fish, and I love to see Nature carried out in him. s 
The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows 
the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and 
so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled. 

When I strolled around the pond in misty weather 
I was sometimes amused by the primitive mode which lo 
some ruder fisherman had adopted. He would perhaps 
have placed alder branches over the narrow holes in the 
ice, which were four or five rods apart and an equal dis- 
tance from the shore, and having fastened the end of the 
hne to a stick to prevent its being pulled through, have 15 
passed the slack line over a twig of the alder, a foot or 
more above the ice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, 
being pulled down, would show when he had a bite. These 
alders loomed through the mist at regular intervals as you 
walked halfway round the pond. 20 

Ah, the pickerel of Walden ! when I see them lying 
on the ice, or in the well which the fisherman cuts in the 
ice, making a little hole to admit the water, I am always 
surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were fabulous 
fishes, they are so foreign to the streets, even to the 25 
woods, foreign as Arabia to our Concord life. They 
possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which 
separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod 
and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. 
They are not green like the pines, nor gray like the stones, 30 
nor blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if 
possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, 
as if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals 



288 WALLEN 

of the Walden water. They, of course, are Walden all 
over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in 
the animal kingdom, Waldenses.° It is surprising 
that they are caught here, — that in this deep and capa- 
5 cious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises 
and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this great 
gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced to see its 
kind in any market ; it would be the cynosure of all eyes 
there. Easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give 
lo up their watery ghosts, like a mortal translated before 
his time to the thin air of heaven. 

As I was desirous to recover the long lost bottom of 
Walden Pond, I surveyed carefully, before the ice broke 
up, early in '4G, with compass and chain and sounding 

IS line. There have been many stories told about the bot- 
tom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly 
had no foundation for themselves. It is remarkable how 
long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond 
without taking the trouble to sound it. I have visited 

20 two such Bottomless Ponds in one walk in this neigh- 
borhood. Many have believed that Walden reached 
quite through to the other side of the globe. Some who 
have lain flat on the ice for a long time, looking down 
through the illusive medium, perchance with watery 

25 eyes into the bargain, and driven to hasty conclusions 
by the fear of catching cold in their breasts, have seen 
vast holes "into which a load of hay might be driven," 
if there were anybody to drive it, the undoubted source 
of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions from 

30 these parts. Others have gone down from the village with 
a '' fifty-six "° and a wagon load of inch rope, but yet 
have failed to find any bottom; for while the "fifty-six" 



THE POND IN WINTER 289 

was resting by the way, they were paying out the rope 
in the vain attempt to fathom their truly immeasur- 
able capacity for marvellousness. But I can assure 
my readers that Walden has a reasonably tight bottom 
at a not unreasonable, though at an unusual, depth. 5 
I fathomed it easily with a cod-line and a stone 
weighing about a pound and a half, and could tell accu- 
rately when the stone left the bottom, by having to pull 
so much harder before the water got underneath to help 
me. The greatest depth was exactly one hundred and 10 
two feet ; to which may be added the five feet which it 
has risen since, making one hundred and seven. This 
is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an 
inch of it can be spared by the imagination. What if 
all ponds were shallow ? Would it not react on the minds 15 
of men ? I am thankful that this pond was made deep 
and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite, 
some ponds will be thought to be bottomless. 

A factory owner, hearing what depth I had found, 
thought that it could not be true, for, judging from 20 
his acquaintance with dams, sand would not lie at so 
steep an angle. But the deepest ponds are not so deep 
in proportion to their area as most suppose, and, if drained, 
would not leave very remarkable valleys. They are not 
like cups between the hills ; for this one, which is so 25 
unusually deep for its area, appears in a vertical section 
through its centre not deeper than a shallow plate. Most 
ponds, emptied, would leave a meadow no more hollow 
than we frequently see. William Gilpin, ° who is so 
admirable in all that relates to landscapes, and usually 30 
so correct, standing at the head of Loch Fyne, in Scotland, 
which he describes as " sl bay of salt water, sixty or 
seventy fathoms deep, four miles in breadth," and abQixt 
u 



290 WALL EN 

fifty miles long, surrounded by mountains, observes, ''If 
we could have seen it immediately after the diluvian 
crash, or whatever convulsion of Nature occasioned 
it, before the waters gushed in, what a horrid chasm it 
5 must have appeared ! 

So high° as heaved the tumid hills, so low 
Down sunk a hollow bottom, broad, and deep, 
Capacious bed of waters — " 

But if, using the shortest diameter of Loch Fyne, we 

lo apply these proportions to Walden, which, as we have 
seen, appears already in a vertical section only like a shal- 
low plate, it will appear four times as shallow. So much 
for the increased horrors of the chasm of Loch Fyne when 
emptied. No doubt many a smiling valley with its stretch- 

15 ing cornfields occupies exactly such a ''horrid chasm," 
from which the waters have receded, though it requires the 
insight and the far sight of the geologist to convince the 
unsuspecting inhabitants of this fact. Often an inquisi- 
tive eye may detect the shores of a primitive lake in the low 

2o horizon hills, and no subsequent elevation of the plain have 
been necessary° to conceal their history. But it is easiest, 
as they who work on the highways know, to find the hol- 
lows by the puddles after a shower. The amount of it is, 
the imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and 

25 soars higher than Nature goes. So, probably, the depth of 
the ocean will be found to be very inconsiderable compared 
with its breadth. 

As I sounded through the ice I could determine the shape 
of the bottom with greater accuracy than is possible in 

30 surveying harbors which do not freeze over, and I was 
surprised at its general regularity. In the deepest part 
there are several acres more level than almost any field 



THE POND IN WINTER 291 

which is exposed to the sun, wind, and plough. In one 
instance, on a Une arbitrarily chosen, the depth did not 
vary more than one foot in thirty rods ; and generally, 
near the middle, I could calculate the variation for each one 
hundred feet in any direction beforehand within three or 5 
four inches. Some are accustomed to speak of deep and 
dangerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like this, but the 
effect of water under these circumstances is to level all 
inequalities. The regularity of the bottom and its con- 
formity to the shores and the range of the neighboring hills lo 
were so perfect that a distant promontory betrayed itself 
in the soundings quite across the pond, and its direction 
could be determined by observing the opposite shore. 
Cape becomes bar, and plain shoal, and valley and gorge 
deep water and channel. 15 

When I had mapped the pond by the scale of ten rods 
to an inch, and put down the soundings, more than a 
hundred in all, I observed this remarkable coincidence. 
Having noticed that the number indicating the greatest 
depth was apparently in the centre of the map, I laid a 20 
rule on the map lengthwise, and then breadthwise, and 
found, to my surprise, that the line of greatest length inter- 
sected the line of greatest breadth exactly at the point of 
greatest depth, notwithstanding that the middle is so 
nearly level, the outline of the pond far from regular, and 25 
the extreme length and breadth were got by measuring into 
the coves ; and I said to myself, Who knows but this hint 
would conduct to the deepest part of the ocean as well as of 
a pond or puddle ? Is not this the rule also for the height 
of mountains, regarded as the opposite of valleys ? We 30 
know that a hill is not highest at its narrowest part. 

Of five coves, three, or all which had been sounded, 
were observed to have a bar quite across their mouths and 



292 WALDEN 

deeper water within, so that the bay tended to be an ex- 
pansion of water within the land not only horizontally but 
vertically, and to form a basin or independent pond, the 
direction of the two capes showing the course of the bar. 

5 Every harbor on the sea-coast, also, has its bar at its en- 
trance. In proportion as the mouth of the cove was wider 
compared with its length, the water over the bar was 
deeper compared with that in the basin. Given, then, the 
length and breadth of the cove, and the character of the 

lo surrounding shore, and you have almost elements enough 
to make out a formula for all cases. 

In order to see how nearly I could guess, with this ex- 
perience, at the deepest point in a pond, by observing the 
outlines of its surface and the character of its shores alone, 

15 I made a plan of White Pond, which contains about forty- 
one acres, and, hke this, has no island in it, nor any visible 
inlet or outlet ; and as the line of greatest breadth fell very 
near the line of least breadth, where two opposite capes 
approached each other and two opposite bays receded, I 

20 ventured to mark a point a short distance from the latter 
Hne, but still on the line of greatest length, as the deepest. 
The deepest part was found to be within one hundred 
feet of this, still farther in the direction to which I had 
inclined, and was only one foot deeper, namely, sixty 

25 feet. Of course, a stream running through, or an is- 
land in the pond, would make the problem much more 
complicated. 

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only 
one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to 

30 infer all the particular results at that point. Now we 
know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of 
course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by 
our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. 



THE POND IN WINTER 293 

Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined 
to those instances which we detect ; but the harmony which 
results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, 
but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, 
is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our 5 
points of view, as, to the traveller, a mountain outhne 
varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of 
profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when 
cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its 
entireness. lo 

What I have observed of the pond is no less true in 
ethics. It is the law of average. Such a rule of the two 
diameters not only guides us toward the sun in the system 
and the heart in man, but draws lines through the length 
and breadth of the aggregate of a man's particular daily 15 
behaviors and waves of fife into his coves and inlets, and 
where they intersect will be the height or depth of his 
character. Perhaps we need only to know how his shores 
trend and his adjacent country or circumstances, to infer 
his depth and concealed bottom. If he is surrounded by 20 
mountainous circumstances, an Achillean shore, whose 
peaks overshadow and are reflected in his bosom, they 
suggest a corresponding depth in him. But a low and 
smooth shore proves him shallow on that side. In our 
bodies, a bold projecting brow falls off to and indicates a 25 
corresponding depth of thought. Also there is a bar across 
the entrance of our every cove, or particular inclination ; 
each is our harbor for a season, in which we are detained and 
partially landlocked. These inclinations are not whimsi- 
cal usually, but their form, size, and direction are deter- 30 
mined by the promontories of the shore, the ancient axes 
of elevation. When this bar is gradually increased by 
storms, tides, or currents, or there is a subsidence of the 



294 WALDEN 

waters, so that it reaches to the surface, that which was at 
first but an inchnation in the shore in which a thought was 
harbored becomes an individual lake, cut off from the ocean, 
wherein the thought secures its own conditions, changes, 
5 perhaps, from salt to fresh, becomes a sweet sea, dead sea, 
or a marsh. At the advent of each individual into this 
life, may we not suppose that such a bar has risen to the 
surface somewhere? It is true, we are such poor navi- 
gators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and 

lo on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the 
bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of 
entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they 
merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur 
to individuahze them. 

15 As for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I have not dis- 
covered any but rain and snow and evaporation, though 
perhaps, with a thermometer and a line, such places may be 
found, for where the water flows into the pond it will prob- 
ably be coldest in summer and warmest in winter. When 

20 the icemen were at work here in '46-7, the cakes sent to the 
shore were one day rejected by those who were stacking 
them up there, not being thick enough to lie side by side 
with the rest; and the cutters thus discovered that the 
ice over a small space was two or three inches thinner than 

25 elsewhere, which made them think that there was an inlet 
there. They also showed me in another place what they 
thought was a "leach hole,"° through which the pond 
leaked out under a hill into a neighboring meadow, 
pushing me out on a cake of ice to see it. It was a small 

30 cavity under ten feet of water ; but I think that I can 
warrant the pond not to need soldering till they find a 
worse leak than that. One has suggested, that if such a 
"leach hole" should be found, its connection with the 



THE POND IN WINTER 295 

meadow, if any existed, might be proved by conveying 
some colored powder or sawdust to the mouth of the hole, 
and then putting a strainer over the spring in the meadow, 
which would catch some of the particles carried through by 
the current. 5 

While I was surveying, the ice, which was sixteen 
inches thick, undulated under a slight wind like water. 
It is well known that a level cannot be used on ice. At one 
rod from the shore its greatest fluctuation, when observed 
by means of a level on land directed toward a graduated lo 
staff on the ice, was three-quarters of an inch, though the 
ice appeared firmly attached to the shore. It was prob- 
ably greater in the middle. Who knov/s but if our instru- 
ments were delicate enough we might detect an undulation 
in the crust of the earth ? When two legs of my level were 15 
on the shore and the third on the ice, and the sights were 
directed over the latter, a rise or fall of the ice of an almost 
infinitesimal amount made a difference of several feet on a 
tree across the pond. When I began to cut holes for sound- 
ing, there were three or four inches of water on the ice 20 
under a deep snow which had sunk it thus far ; but the 
water began immediately to run into these holes, and con- 
tinued to rim for two days in deep streams, which wore 
away the ice on every side, and contributed essentially, 
if not mainly, to dry the surface of the pond ; for, as the 25 
water ran in, it raised and floated the ice. This was some- 
what like cutting a hole in the bottom of a ship to let the 
water out. When such holes freeze, and a rain succeeds, 
and finally a new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over all, 
it is beautifully mottled internally by dark figures, shaped 30 
somewhat like a spider's web, what you may call ice 
rosettes, produced by the channels worn by the water 
flowing from all sides to a centre. Sometimes, also, 



296 WALDEN 

when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, I saw a 
double shadow of myself, one standing on the head of the 
other, one on the ice, the other on the trees or hillside. 

While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick 

5 and solid, the prudent landlord comes from the village to 
get ice to cool his summer drink ; impressively, even pathet- 
ically wise, to foresee the heat and thirst of July now in 
January, — wearing a thick coat and mittens ! when so 
many things are not provided for. It may be that he lays 

lo up no treasures in this world which will cool his summer 
drink in the next. He cuts and saws the solid pond, un- 
roofs the house of fishes, and carts off their very element 
and air, held fast by chains and stakes like corded wood, 
through the favoring winter air, to wintry cellars, to 

15 underhe the summer there. It looks like solidified azure, 
as, far off, it is drawn through the streets. These ice- 
cutters are a merry race, full of jest and sport, and when I 
went among them they were wont to invite me to saw pit- 
fashion with them, I standing underneath. 

20 In the winter of '46-7 there came a hundred men of 
Hyperborean" extraction swoop down on to our pond one 
morning, with many car-loads of ungainly-looking farming 
tools, sleds, ploughs, drill-barrows, turf-knives, spades, 
saws, rakes, and each man was armed with a double- 

25 pointed pikestaff, such as is not described in the New- 
England Farmer or the Cultivator. ° I did not know 
whether they had come to sow a crop of winter rye, or 
some other kind of grain recently introduced from Iceland. 
As I saw no manure, I judged that they meant to skim 

30 the land, as I had done, thinking the soil was deep and had 
lain fallow long enough. They said that a gentleman 
farmer, who was behind the scenes, wanted to double his 



THE POND ' IN WINTER 297 

money, which, as I understood, amounted to half a 
milHon already; but in order to cover each one of his 
dollars with another, he took off the only coat, ay, the 
skin itself, of Walden Pond in the midst of a hard winter. 
They went to work at once, ploughing, harrowing, rolling, 5 
furrowing, in admirable order, as if they were bent on 
making this a model farm ; but when I was looking sharp 
to see what kind of seed they dropped into the furrow, 
a gang of fellows by my side suddenly began to hook up 
the virgin mould itself, with a peculiar jerk, clean down to 10 
the sand, or rather the water, — for it was a verj^ springy 
soil, — indeed all the terra firma there was, — and hauled 
it away on sleds, and then I guessed that they must be 
cutting peat in a bog. So they came and went every day, 
with a peculiar shriek from the locomotive, from and to 15 
some point of the polar regions, as it seemed to me, like a 
flock of arctic snow-birds. But sometimes Squaw Walden 
had her revenge, and a hired man, walking behind his 
team, slipped through a crack in the ground down toward 
Tartarus,° and he who was so brave before suddenly 20 
became but the ninth part of a man, almost gave up his ani- 
mal heat, and was glad to take refuge in my house, and 
acknowledged that there was some virtue in a stove; 
©r sometimes the frozen soil took a piece of steel out of a 
ploughshare, or a plough got set in the furrow and had to 25 
be cut out. 

To speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, with Yankee 
overseers, came from Cambridge^ every day to get out the 
ice. They divided it into cakes by methods too well known 
to require description, and these, being sledded to the 30 
shore, were rapidly hauled off on to an ice platform, 
and raised by grappling irons and block and tackle, 
worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely as so many 



298 WALDEN 

barrels of flour, and there placed evenly side by side, 
and row upon row, as if they formed the solid base of an 
obelisk designed to pierce the clouds. They told me that 
in a good day they could get out a thousand tons, which 
5 was the yield of about one acre. Deep ruts and "cradle 
holes " were worn in the ice, as on terra firma, by the 
passage of the sleds over the same track, and the horses 
invariably ate their oats out of cakes of ice hollowed 
out like buckets. They stacked up the cakes thus in 

10 the open air in a pile thirty-five feet high on one side and 
six or seven rods square, putting hay between the outside 
layers to exclude the air; for when the wind, though 
never so cold, finds a passage through, it will wear large 
cavities, leaving slight supports or studs only here and 

15 there, and finally topple it down. At first it looked like 
a vast blue fort or "\^alhalla° ; but when they began to tuck 
the coarse meadow hay into the crevices, and this became 
covered with rime and icicles, it looked like a venerable 
moss-grown and hoary ruin, built of azure-tinted marble, 

20 the abode of Winter, that old man we see in the almanac, 
— his shanty, as if he had a design to estivate° with us. 
They calculated that not twenty-five per cent, of this would 
reach its destination, and that two or three per cent, would 
be wasted in the cars. Howe^'er, a still greater part of 

25 this heap had a different destiny from what was intended ; 
for, either because the ice was found not to keep so well as 
was expected, containing more air than usual, or for some 
other reason, it never got to market. This heap, made in 
the winter of '46-7 and estimated to contain ten thousand 

30 tons, was finally covered with hay and boards ; and 
though it was unroofed the following July, and a part of it 
carried off, the rest remaining exposed to the sun, it stood 
over that summer and the next winter, and was not quite 



THE POND IN WINTER 299 

melted till September, 1848. Thus the pond recovered the 
greater part. 

Like the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, 
has a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, 
and you can easily tell it from the white ice of the river, 5 
or the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a 
mile off. Sometimes one of those great cakes slips from 
the ice-man's sled into the village street, and lies there for a 
week like a great emerald, an object of interest to all 
passers. I have noticed that a portion of Walden which 10 
in the state of water w^as green will often, when frozen, ap- 
pear from the same point of view blue. So the hollows 
about this pond will, sometimes, in the winter, be filled 
witxi a greenish water romewhat like its own, but the next 
day will have frozen blue. Perhaps the blue color of 15 
water and ice is due to the light and air they contain, 
and the most transparent is the bluest. Ice is an interest- 
ing subject for contemplation. They told me that they 
had some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond° five years old 
which was as good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of 20 
water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet for- 
ever? It is commonly said that this is the difference 
between the affections and the intellect. 

Thus for sixteen days I saw from my -window a hun- 
dred men at work like busy husbandmen, with teams and 25 
horses and apparently all the implements of farming, 
such a picture as we see on the first page of the almanac ; 
and as often as I looked out I was reminded of the fable 
of the lark and the reapers, or the parable of the sower, ° 
and the like ; and now they are all gone, and in thirty 30 
days more, probably, I shall look from the same window 
on the pure sea-green Walden water there, reflecting the 
clouds and the trees, and sending up its evaporations in 



300 WALDEN 

solitude, and no traces will appear that a man has ever 
stood there. Perhaps I shall hear a solitary loon laugh 
as he dives and plumes himself, or shall see a lonely- 
fisher in his boat, like a floating leaf, beholding his form 
5 reflected in the waves, where lately a hundred men 
securely labored. 

Thus it appears that the sw^eltering inhabitants of 
Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and 
Calcutta, ° drink at my well. In the morning I bathe my 

lo intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy 
of the Bhagvat Geeta,° since whose composition years of 
the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which 
our modern world and its literature seem puny and 
trivial ; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred 

15 to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity 
from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to 
my well for water, and lo ! there I meet the servant of 
the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra,° 
w^ho still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the 

20 Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and 
w^ater jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for 
his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in 
the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with 
the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it is 

25 wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis° 
and the Hesperides,° makes the periplus of Hanno,° and, 
floating b}^ Ternate and Tidore° and the mouth of the 
Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic gales of the Indian seas, 
and is landed in ports of which Alexander only heard the 

30 names. 



SPRING 

The opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters com- 
monly causes a pond to break up earlier ; for the water, 
agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away 
the surrounding ice. But such was not the effect on 
Walden that year, for she had soon got a thick new gar- 5 
ment to take the place of the old. This pond never 
breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on 
account both of its greater depth and its having no 
stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice. 
I never knew it to open in the course of a winter, not 10 
excepting that of '52-3, which gave the ponds so severe 
a trial. It commonly opens about the first of April, a 
week or ten days later than Flint's Pond and Fair Haven, 
beginning to melt on the north side and in the shallower 
parts where it began to freeze. It indicates better than 15 
any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, 
being least affected by transient changes of temperature. 
A severe cold of a few days' duration in March may very 
much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the 
temperature of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly. 20 
A thermometer thrust into the middle of Walden on the 
6th of March, 1847, stood at 32°, or freezing point; near 
the shore, at 33° ; in the middle of Flint's Pond, the same 
day, at 32^° ; at a dozen rods from the shore, in shallow 
water, under ice a foot thick, at 36°. This difference of 25 
three and a half degrees between the temperature of the 
301 



302 WALDEN 

deep water and the shallow in the latter pond, and the 
fact that a great proportion of it is comparatively shallow, 
show why it should break up so much sooner than Walden. 
The ice in the shallowest part was at this time several 
5 inches thinner than in the middle. In mid-winter the 
middle had been the warmest and the ice thinnest there. 
So, also every one who has waded about the shores of a 
pond in summer must have perceived how much warmer 
the water is close to the shore, where only three or four 

lo inches deep, than a little distance out, and on the sur- 
face where it is deep, than near the bottom. In spring 
the sun not only exerts an influence through the increased 
temperature of the air and earth, but its heat passes 
through ice a foot or more thick, and is reflected from the 

IS bottom in shallow water, and so also warms the water 
and melts the under side of the ice, at the same time that 
it is melting it more directly above, making it uneven, 
and causing the air bubbles which it contains to extend 
themselves upward and downward until it is completely 

20 honey-combed, and at last disappears suddenly in a single 
spring rain. Ice has its grain as well as wood, and when 
a cake begins to rot or " comb,'^ that is, assume the appear- 
ance of honey-comb, whatever may be its position, the air 
cells are at right angles with what was the water surface. 

25 Where there is a rock or a log rising near to the surface 
the ice over it is much thinner, and is frequently quite 
dissolved by this reflected heat ; and I have been told that 
in the experiment at Cambridge to freeze water in a 
shallow wooden pond, though the cool air circulated under- 

30 neath, and so had access to both sides, the reflection of the 
sun from the bottom more than counter-balanced this 
advantage. When a warm rain in the middle of the 
winter melts off the snow-ice from Walden, and leaves a 



SPRING 303 

hard dark or transparent ice on the middle, there will be 
a strip of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod or more 
wide, about the shores, created by this reflected heat. 
Also, as I have said, the bubbles themselves within the 
ice operate as burning glasses to melt the ice beneath. 5 

The phenomena of the year take place every day 
in a pond on a small scale. Every morning, generally 
speaking, the shallow water is being w^armed more rapidly 
than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after 
all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until 10 
the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. The 
night is the winter, the morning and evening are the 
spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The crack- 
ing and booming of the ice indicate a change of temper- 
ature. One jDleasant morning after a cold night, February 15 
24th, 1850, having gone to Flint's Pond to spend the 
day, I noticed with surprise, that when I struck the 
ice with the head of my axe, it resounded like a gong 
for many rods around, or as if I had struck on a tight 
drum-head. The pond began to boom about an hour 20 
after sunrise, when it felt the influence of the sun's rays 
slanted upon it from over the hills; it stretched itself 
and yawned like a waking man with a gradually increas- 
ing tumult, which was kept up three or four hours. It 
took a short siesta at noon, and boomed once more 25 
toward night, as the sun was withdrawing his influence. 
In the right stage of the weather a pond fires its evening 
gun with great regularity. But in the middle of the 
day, being full of cracks, and the air also being less elastic, 
it had completely lost its resonance, and probably fishes 30 
and muskrats could not then have been stunned by a 
blow on it. The fisherman say that the "thundering of 
the pond" scares the fishes and prevents their biting. 



304 WALDEN 

The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot 
tell surely when to expect its thundering; but though 
I may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. Who 
would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned 

5 a thing to be so sensitive ? Yet it has its law to which 
it thunders obedience when it should as surely as the buds 
expand in the spring. The earth is all alive and cov- 
ered with papillae. ° The largest pond is as sensitive 
to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its 

lo tube. 

One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that 
I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring 
come in. The ice in the pond at length begins to be 
honey-combed, and I can set my heel in it as I walk. 

15 Fogs and rains and warmer suns are gradually melting 
the snow; the days have grown sensibly longer; and I 
see how I shall get through the winter without adding 
to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer necessary. 
I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear 

20 the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped 
squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly ex- 
hausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter 
quarters. On the 13th of March, after I had heard the 
bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still 

25 nearly a foot thick. As the weather grew warmer, it 
was not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken up 
and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was completely 
melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the middle 
was merely honey-combed and saturated with water, 

30 so that you could put your foot through it when six inches 
thick; but by the next day evening, perhaps, after a 
warm rain followed by fog, it would have wholly disap- 



SPRING 305 

peared, all gone off with the fog, spirited away. One 
year I went across the middle only five days before it 
disappeared entirely. In 1845 Walden was first com- 
pletely open on the 1st of April ; in '46, the 25th of March ; 
in '47, the 8th of April; in '51, the 28th of March; ins 
'52, the 18th of April ; in '53, the 23d of March ; in '54, 
about the 7th of April. 

Every incident connected with the breaking up of the 
rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is par- 
ticularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great lo 
extremes. When the warmer days come, they who 
dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a 
startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters 
were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it 
rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the 15 
mud with quakings of the earth. One old man, who 
has been a close observer of Nature, and seems as thor- 
oughly wise in regard to all her operations as if she had 
b?en put upon the stocks when he was a boy, and he had 
helped to lay her keel, — who has come to his growth, and 20 
can hardly acquire more natural lore if he should live to 
the age of Methuselah,° — told me, and I was surprised 
to hear him express wonder at any of Nature's operations, 
for I thought that there were no secrets between them, 
that one spring day he took his gun and boat, and 25 
thought that he would have a little sport with the ducks. 
There was ice still on the meadows, but it was all gone 
out of the river, and he dropped down without obstruc- 
tion from Sudbury, where he lived, to Fair-Haven Pond, 
which he found, unexpectedly, covered for the most 30 
part with a firm field of ice. It was a warm day, and he 
was surprised to see so great a body of ice remaining. 
Not seeing any ducks, he hid his boat on the north or 



306 WALDEN 

back side of an island in the pond, and then concealed 
himself in the bushes on the south side, to await them. 
The ice was melted for three or four rods from the shore 
and there was a smooth and warm sheet of water, with 
5 a muddy bottom, such as the ducks love, within, and he 
thought it likely that some would be along pretty soon. 
After he had lain still there about an hour he heard a 
low and seemingly very distant sound, but singularly 
grand and impressive, unhke anything he had ever heard, 

lo gradually sweUing and increasing as if it would have a 
universal and memorable ending, a sullen rush and roar, 
which seemed to him all at once like the sound of a vast 
body of fowl coming in to settle there, and, seizing his gun, 
he started up in haste and excited; but he found, to 

IS his surprise, that the whole body of the ice had started 
while he lay there, and drifted in to the shore, and the 
sound he had heard w^as made by its edge grating on the 
shore, — at first gently nibbled and crumbled off, but at 
length heaving up and scattering its wrecks along the 

20 island to a considerable height before it came to a stand- 
still. 

At length the sun's rays have attained the right angle, 
and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the 
snow banks, and the sun dispersing the mist smiles on a 

25 checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with 
incense, through which the traveller picks his way from 
islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkhng 
rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood 
of winter which they are bearing off. 

30 Few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe 
the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing 
down the sides of a deep cut on the railroad through 
which I passed on my way to the village, a phenomenon 



SPRING 307 

not ver}^ common on so large a scale, though the number 
of freshly exposed banks of the right material must have 
been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented. 
The material was sand of every degree of fineness and of 
various rich colors, commonly mixed with a Httle clay, s 
When the frost comes out in the spring, and even in a 
thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to flow down 
the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out through the 
snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen 
before. Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace lo 
one with another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, 
which obeys halfway the law of currents, and halfway 
that of vegetation. As it flows it takes the forms of sappy 
leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or 
more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, 15 
the laciniated,° lobed, and imbricated thalluses° of some 
lichens ; or you are reminded of coral, of leopards' paws 
or birds' feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements 
of all kinds. It is a truly grotesque vegetation, whose 
forms and color we see imitated in bronze, a sort of archi- 20 
tectural foliage more ancient and typical than acanthus, 
chicory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves; destined 
perhaps, under some circumstances, to become a puzzle 
to future geologists. The whole cut impressed me as if 
it were a cave with its stalactites laid open to the light. 25 
The various shades of the sand are singularly rich and 
agreeable, embracing the different iron colors, brown, 
gray, yellowish, and reddish. When the flowing mass 
reaches the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out 
flatter into strands, the separate streams losing their 30 
semi-cylindrical form and gradually becoming more flat 
and broad, running together as they are more moist, till 
they form an almost flat sand still variously and beautifully 



308 WALDEN 

shaded, but in which you can trace the original forms of 
vegetation; till at length, in the water itself, they are 
converted into banks, like those formed off the mouths 
of rivers, and the forms of vegetation are lost in the ripple 

5 marks on the bottom. 

The whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet 
high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of 
foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or 
both sides, the produce of one spring day. What makes 

lo this sand foliage remarkable is its springing into existence 
thus suddenly. When I see on the one side the inert bank 
— for the sun acts on one side first — and on the other this 
luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected 
as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the 

15 Artist who made the world and me, — had come to 
where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and 
with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. 
I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this 
sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass 

20 as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the 
very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No 
wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in 
leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms 
have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. 

25 The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally, 
whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick 
lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs 
and the leaves of fat (Xei/So), labor, lapsus, to flow or slip 
downward, a lapsing; Ao^o's, globus, lobe, globe; also 

30 lap, flap, and many other words), externally, a dry thin 
leaf, even as the / and v are a pressed and dried b. The 
radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the b (single lobed, 
or B, double lobed), with the Uquid I behind it pressing 



SPRING 309 

it forward. In globe, gib, the guttural g adds to the 
meaning the capacity of the throat. The feathers and 
wings of birds are still drier and thinner leaves. Thus, 
also, you pass from the lumpish grub in the earth to the 
airy and fluttering butterfly. The very globe continually 5 
transcends and translates itself, and becomes winged in 
its orbit. Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, 
as if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of water 
plants have impressed on the watery mirror. The whole 
tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves 10 
whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities 
are the ova of insects in their axils. 

When the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow, but 
in the morning the streams will start once more and 
branch and branch again into a myriad of others. You 15 
here see perchance how blood vessels are formed. If 
you look closely you observe that first there pushes 
forward from the thawing mass a stream of softened 
sand with a drop-like point, like the ball of the finger, 
feeling its way slowly and blindly downward, imtil at last 20 
with more heat and moisture, as the sun gets higher, 
the most fluid portion, in its effort to obey the law to 
which the most inert also yields, separates from the 
latter and forms for itself a meandering channel or artery 
within that, in which is seen a little silvery stream glancing 25 
like lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or branches 
to another, and ever and anon swallowed up in the 
sand. It is wonderful how rapidly yet perfectly the sand 
organizes itself as it flows, using the best material its 
mass affords to form the sharp edges of its channel. Such 30 
are the sources of rivers. In the silicious matter w^hich 
the water deposits is perhaps the bony system, and in the 
still finer soil and organic matter the fleshy fibre or eel- 



310 WALDEN 

lular tissue. What is man but a mass of thawing clay ? 
The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. 
The fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thaw- 
ing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body 
5 would expand and flow out to under a more genial 
heaven ? Is not the hand a spreading jjalm leaf with its 
lobes and veins? The ear may be regarded, fancifully, 
as a lichen, umhilicaria, on the side of the head, with its 
lobe or drop. The lip — labium, from labor ( ?) — laps 

10 or lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth. The 
nose is a manifest congealed drop or stalactite. The chin 
is a still larger drop, the confluent dripping of the face. 
The cheeks are a slide from the brows into the valley 
of the face, opposed and diffused by the cheek bones. 

IS Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a thick 
and now loitering drop, larger or smaller; the lobes 
are the fingers of the leaf ; and as many lobes as it has, 
in so many directions it tends to flow, and more heat or 
other genial influences would have caused it to flow yet 

2o farther. 

Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the 
principle of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of 
this earth but patented a leaf. What Champollion° will 
decipher this hieroglyphic for us, that we may turn over a 

25 new leaf at last ? This phenomenon is more exhilarating 
to me than the luxuriance and fertility of vineyards. 
True, it is somewhat excrementitious in its character, and 
there is no end to the heaps of liver, lights, and bowels, as 
if the globe were turned wrong side outward; but this 

30 suggests at least that Nature has some bowels,° and there 
again is mother of humanity. This is the frost coming out 
of the ground ; this is Spring. It precedes the green and 
flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. I 



SPRING 311 

know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and in- 
digestions. It convinces me that Earth is still in her swad- 
dling clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every 
side. Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There 
is nothing inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the 5 
bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that Nature is ''in 
full blast " within. The earth is not a mere fragment of 
dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, 
to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but 
living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers 10 
and fruit, — not a fossil earth, but a living earth ; com- 
pared with whose great central hf e all animal and vegetable 
life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviae 
from their graves. You may melt your metals and cast 
them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will 15 
never excite me like the forms which this molten earth 
flows out into. And not only it, but the institutions 
upon it, are plastic hke clay in the hands of the potter. 

Ere long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and 
plain and in every hollow, the frost comes out of the 20 
ground like a dormant quadruped from its burrow, and 
seeks the sea with music, or migrates to other climes in 
clouds. Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful 
than Thor° with his hammer. The one melts, the other 
but breaks in pieces. 25 

When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few 
warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant 
to compare the first tender signs of the infant year just 
peeping forth with the stately beauty of the withered vege- 
tation which had withstood the winter, — life-everlasting, 30 
golden-rods, pinweeds, and graceful wild grasses, more 
obvious and interesting frequently than in summer even, 



312 WALDEN 

as if their beauty was not ripe till then ; even cotton-grass, 
cat-tails, mulleins, johnswort, hard-hack, meadow-sweet, 
and other strong-stemmed plants, those unexhausted 
granaries which entertain the earliest birds, — decent ° 
5 weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears. I am 
particularly attracted by the arching and sheaf-like top 
of the wool-grass ; it brings back the summer to our winter 
memories, and is among the forms which art loves to copy, 
and which, in the vegetable kingdom, have the same rela- 

lo tion to types already in the mind of man that astronomy 
has. It is an antique style older than Greek or Egyptian. 
Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an in- 
expressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are ac- 
customed to hear this king described as a rude and boister- 

15 ous tyrant ; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns 
the tresses of Summer. 

At the approach of spring the red squirrels got under my 
house, two at a time, directly under my feet as I sat reading 
or writing, and kept up the queerest chuckling and chirrup- 

20 ing and vocal pirouetting and gurgling sounds that ever 
were heard ; and when I stamped they only chirruped the 
louder, as if past all fear and respect in their mad pranks, 
defying humanity to stop them. No, you don't — chicka- 
ree — chickaree. They were wholly deaf to my argu- 

25 ments, or failed to perceive their force, and fell into a 
strain of invective that was irresistible. 

The first sparrow of spring ! The year beginning with 
younger hope than ever ! The faint silvery warblings 
heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the 

30 bluebird, the song-sparrow and the red-wing, as if the 
last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell ! What at such a 
time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written 
revelations? The brooks sing carols and glees to the 



SPUING 313 

spring. The marsh-hawk saihng low over the meadow is 
already seeking the first slimy life that awakes. The 
sinking sound of melting snow is heard in all dells, and 
the ice dissolves apace in the ponds. The grass flames 
up on the hillsides like a spring fire, — "et primutus 5 
oritur herba imbribus primoribus evocata/' — as if the 
earth sent forth an inward heat to greet the returning 
sun ; not yellow but green is the color of its flame ; — 
the symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a 
long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer^ 10 
checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, 
lifting its spear of last year's hay with the fresh life 
below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the 
ground. It is almost identical with that, for in the 
growing days of June, when the rills are dry, the grass 15 
blades are their channels, and from year to year the herds 
drink at this perennial green stream, and the mower draws 
from it betimes their winter supply. So our human life 
but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green 
blade to eternity. 20 

Walden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods 
wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still 
at the east end. A great field of ice has cracked off from 
the main body. I hear a song-sparrow singing from the 
bushes on the shore, — olit, olit, olit, — chip, chip, chip, 25 
che char, — che wiss, wiss, iviss. He too is helping to 
crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in the 
edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, 
but more regular ! It is unusually hard, owing to the 
recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or waved 30 
like a palace floor. But the wind slides eastward over its 
opacjue surface in vain, till it reaches the living surface 
beyond. It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water 



314 WALDEN 

sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee 
and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and 
of the sands on its shore, — a silvery sheen as from the 
scales of a leuciscus° as it were all one active fish. Such 
5 is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden was 
dead and is alive again. ° But this spring it broke up 
more steadily, as I have said. 

The change from storm and winter to serene and mild 
weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic 

lo ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim. 
It is seemingly instantaneous at last. Suddenly an influx 
of light filled my house, though the evening w^as at hand, 
and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves 
were dripping with sleety rain. I looked out the window, 

IS and lo ! where yesterday was cold gray ice there lay the 
transparent pond already calm and full of hope as in a 
summer evening, reflecting a summer evening sky in its 
bosom, though none was visible overhead, as if it had in- 
telligence with some remote horizon. I heard a robin 

20 in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand 
years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a 
thousand more, — the same sweet and powerful song as of 
yore. the evening robin, at the end of a New England 
summer day ! If I could ever find the twig he sits upon ! 

25 1 mean he; I mean the twig. This at least is not the 
Turdus migratorius.° The pitch-pines and shrub-oaks 
about my house, which had so long drooped, suddenly 
resumed their several characters, looked brighter, greener, 
and more erect and alive, as if effectually cleansed and 

^o restored by the rain. I knew that it would not rain any 
more. You may tell by looking at any twig of the forest, 
ay, at your very wood-pile, whether its winter is past or not. 
As it grew darker, I was startled by the honking of geese 



SPRING 315 

flying low over the woods, like weary travellers getting in 
late from southern lakes, and indulging at last in unre- 
strained complaint and mutual consolation. Standing at 
my door, I could hear the rush of their wings ; when, driving 
toward my house, they suddenly spied my light, and with 5 
hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. So I 
came in, and shut the door, and passed my first spring night 
in the woods. 

In the morning I watched the geese from the door 
through the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty 10 
rods off, so large and tumultuous that Walden appeared 
like an artificial pond for their amusement. But when I 
stood on the shore they at once rose up with a great 
flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and 
when they had got into rank circled about over mj^ head, 15 
twenty-nine of them, and then steered straight to Canada, 
with a regular honk from the leader at intervals, trusting 
to break their fast in muddier pools. A "plump" of 
ducks rose at the same time and took the route to the 
north in the wake of their noisier cousins. 20 

For a week I heard the circling groping clangor of some 
sohtary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its companion, 
and still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life 
than they could sustain. In April the pigeons were seen 
again flying express in small flocks, and in due time 1 25 
heard the martins twittering over my clearing, though it 
had not seemed that the township contained so many that 
it could afford me any, and I fancied that they were pecul- 
iarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere 
white men came. In almost all climes the tortoise and the 30 
frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, 
and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants 
spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight 



316 WALDEN 

oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of 
Nature. 

As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the 
coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of 
5 Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age. — 

"Eurus ad Auroram,° Nabathacaque regna recessit, 
Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis." 

"The East- Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathsean 
kingdom, 
And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning 
rays. 

lo Man was born. Whether that Artificer of things, 

The origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed ; 
Or the earth being recent and lately sundered from the high 
Ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven." 

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades 

15 greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better 
thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present 
always, and took advantage of every accident that befell 
us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the 
slightest dew that falls on it ; and did not spend our time in 

20 atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call 
doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already 
spring. In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are 
forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun 
holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through 

25 our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence 
of our neighbors. You may have known your neighbor 
yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely 
pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world ; but 
the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, 

30 recreating the world, and you meet him at some serene 



SPRING 317 

work, and see how his exhausted and debauched veins 
expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring 
influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults 
are forgotten. There is not only an atmosphere of good- 
will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping for 5 
expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new- 
born instinct, and for a short hour the south hillside echoes 
to no vulgar jest. You see some innocent fair shoots 
preparing to burst from his gnarled rind and try another 
year's life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even lo 
he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer 
does not leave open his prison doors, — why the judge 
does not dismiss his case, — w^hy the preacher does not dis- 
miss his congregation ! It is because they do not obey 
the hint w^hich God gives them, nor accept the pardon 15 
which he freely offers to all. 

"A return to goodness produced each day in the tran- 
quil and beneficent breath of the morning, causes that in 
respect to the love of virtue and the hatred of vice, one 
approaches a little the primitive nature of man, as the 20 
sprouts of the forest which has been felled. In like manner 
the evil which one does in the interval of a day prevents 
the germs of virtues which began to spring up again from 
developing themselves and destroys them. 

"After the germs of virtue have thus been prevented 25 
many times from developing themselves, then the benefi- 
cent breath of evening does not suffice to preserve them. 
As soon as the br^^ath of evening does not suffice longer 
to preserve them, then the nature of man does not differ 
much from that of the brute. Men seeing the nature of this so- 
man like that of the brute, think that he has never pos- 
sessed the innate faculty of reason. Are those the true, 
and natural sentiments of man ? " 



318 WALDEN 

"The Golden Age° was first created, which without any 

avenger 
Spontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude. 
Punishment and fear were not; nor were threatening 

words read 
On suspended brass ; nor did the suppliant crowd fear 
5 The words of their judge ; but were safe without an avenger. 
Not yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended 
To the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world, 
And mortals knew no shores but their own. 

There was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm 
lo Blasts soothed the flowers born without seed." 

On the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the bank of 
the river near the Nine- Acre-Corner bridge, standing on the 
quaking grass and willow roots, where the muskrats lurk, 
I heard a singular rattling sound, somewhat like that of the 

15 sticks which boys play wnth their fingers, when, looking up, 
I observed a very slight and graceful hawk, like a night- 
hawk, alternately soairng like a ripple and tumbling a rod 
or two over and over, showing the under side of its wings, 
which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, or like the 

20 pearly inside of a shell. This sight reminded me of falconry 
and what nobleness and poetry are associated with the 
sport. The Merlin° it seemed to me it might be called 
but I care not for its name. It was the most ethereal 
flight I had ever witnessed. It did not simply flutter 

25 Hke a butterfly, nor soar Hke the larger hawks, but it 
sported with proud reliance in the fields of air ; mounting 
again and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its 
free and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and 
then recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never I 

30 set its foot on terra jirma. It appeared to have no com-i 
panion in the universe, — sporting there alone, — and tc| 
need none but the morning and the ether with w^hich itj 



SFRIXG 319 

played. It was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely 
beneath it. Where was the parent which hatched it, its 
kindred, and its father in the heavens ? The tenant of the 
air, it seemed related to the earth but by an egg hatched 
sometime in the crevice of a crag ; — or was its native nest 5 
made in the angle of a cloud, woven of the rainbow's 
trimmings and the sunset sky, and lined with some soft 
midsummer haze caught up from earth? Its e3^ry now 
some cliffy cloud. 

Beside this I got a rare mess of golden and silver and 10 
bright cupreous° fishes, which looked like a string of 
jewels. Ah ! I have penetrated to those meadows on the 
morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hum- 
mock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, when 
the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so pure 15 
and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they 
had been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose. 
There needs no stronger proof of immortality. All things 
must live in such a light. Death, ° where was thy sting ? 
O Grave, where was thy victory, then? 20 

Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the un- 
explored forests and meadows which surround it. We 
need the tonic of wildness, — to wade sometimes in 
marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, 
and hear the booming of the snipe ; to smell the whispering 25 
sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds 
her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the 
ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore 
and learn all things, we require that all things be mysteri- 
ous and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, 30 
unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathom- 
able. We can never have enough of Nature. We must be 
refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and 



320 WALDEN 

Titanic° features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilder- 
ness with its hving and its decaying trees, the thunder- 
cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces 
freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, 

5 and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. We 
are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the 
carrion which disgusts and disheartens us and deriving 
health and strength from the repast. There w^as a dead 
horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which com- 

lo pelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially in the 

. night when the air was heavy, but the assurance it gave 

me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Nature 

was my com|)ensation for this. I love to see that Nature 

is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be 

15 sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another ; that tender 
organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence 
like pulp, — tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tor- 
toises and toads run over in the road ; and that sometimes 
it has rained flesh and blood. With the liability to acci- 

20 dent, we must see how little account is to be made of it. 
The impression made on a wise man is that of universal 
innocence. Poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any 
wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable ground. 
It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be 

25 stereotyped. 

Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other 
trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around 
the pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the land- 
scape in cloudy days, as if the sun were breaking through 

30 mists and shining faintly on the hillsides here and there. 
On the third or fourth of May I saw a loon in the pond, 
and during the first week of the month I heard the whip- 
poorwill, the brown-thrasher, the veery, the wood-pewee, 



SPRING 321 

the chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood- 
thrush long before. The phoebe had already come once 
more and looked in at my door and window, to see if my 
house was cavern-like enough for her, sustaining herself 
on humming wings with clinched talons, as if she held by 5 
the air, while she surveyed the premises. The sulphur- 
like pollen of the pitch-pine soon covered the pond and the 
stones and rotten wood along the shore, so that you could 
have collected a barrelful. This is the " sulphur showers " 
we hear of. Even in Calidas' drama of Sacontala,° we 10 
read of ''rills dyed yellow with the golden dust of the 
lotus." And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, 
as one rambles into higher and higher grass. 

Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed, 
and the second year was similar to it. I finally left 15 
Walden September 6th, 1847. 



CONCLUSION 

To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change 
of air and scenery. Thank Heaven, here is not all the 
world. The buck-eye does not grow in New England, 
and the mocking-bird is rarely heard here. The wild- 
5 goose is more of a cosmopolite than we ; he breaks his 
fast in Canada, takes a luncheon in the Ohio, and plumes 
himself for the night in a southern bayou. Even the bison, 
to some extent, keeps pace with the seasons, cropping the 
pastures of the Colorado only till a greener and sweeter 

lo grass awaits him by the Yellowstone. Yet we think 
that if rail-fences are pulled down, and stone- walls piled 
up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives 
and our fates decided. If you are chosen town-clerk, 
forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego° this summer : 

IS but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless. 
The universe is wider than our views of it. 

Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel° of our 
craft, Hke curious passengers, and not make the voyage 
like stupid sailors picking oakum. ° The other side of the 

20 globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging 
is only great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for 
diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to Southern 
Africa to chase the giraffe ; but surely that is not the game 
he would be after. How long, pray, would a man hunt 

25 giraffes if he could ? Snipes and woodcocks also may 

322 



CONCLUSION 323 

afford rare sport ; but I trust it would be nobler game to 
shoot one's self. — 

" Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find 
A thousand regions in your mind 
Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be 5 

Expert in home-cosmography." 

What does Africa — what does the West stand for ? Is 
not our own interior white on the chart ? black though 
it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the 
source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a lo 
North- West Passage around this continent, that we would 
find ? Are these the problems w^hich most concern man- 
kind ? Is Franklin° the only man who is lost, that his wife 
should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell° 
know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, 15 
the Lewis and Clark and Frobisher,° of your own streams 
and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes, — with 
shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be 
necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. 
Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely ? 20 
Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds 
within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of 
thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which 
the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hum- 
mock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who 25 
have no seZ/-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. 
They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no 
sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their 
clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was 
the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, ° with 30 
all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of 
the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral 



324 WALDEN 

world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet 
unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many 
thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in 
a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to 
5 assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic 
and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone. — 

" Erret, et extremes alter scrutetur Iberos. 
Plus habet hie vitse, plus habet ille vise." 

" Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians, 
lo I have more of God, they more of the road." 

It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the 
cats in Zanzibar. ° Yet do this even till you can do better, 
and you may perhaps find some "Symmes' Hole"° by 
which to get at the inside at last. England and France, 

IS Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, ° all 
front on this private sea; but no bark from them has 
ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt 
the direct way to India. If you would learn to speak all 
tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you 

20 would travel farther than all travellers, be naturahzed 
in all climes, and cause the Sphinx° to dash her head 
against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philoso- 
pher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye 
and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the 

2 :; wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now on that 
farthest western way, which does not pause at the Missis- 
sippi or the Pacific, nor conduct toward a worn-out China 
or Japan, but leads on direct, a tangent to this sphere, 
summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down, 

33 and at last earth down too. 

It is said that Mirabeau° took to highway robbery 
"to ascertain what degree of resolution was necessary 



CONCLUSION 325 

in order to place one's self in formal opposition to the 
most sacred laws of society." He declared that ''a soldier 
who fights in the ranks does not require half so much 
courage as a foot-pad," — ''that honor and religion have 
never stood in the w^ay of a well-considered and a firm 5 
resolve." This was manly, as the world goes; and yet it 
was idle, if not desperate. A saner man would have found 
himself often enough "in formal opposition " to what are 
deemed ''the most sacred laws of society," through obedi- 
ence to yet more sacred laws, and so have tested his resolu- lo 
tion without going out of his way. It is not for a man to 
put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain 
himself in whatever attitude he find himself through 
obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one 
of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to 15 
meet with such. 

I left the w^oods for as good a reason as I went there. 
Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to 
live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is 
remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particu- 20 
lar route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had 
not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my 
door to the pond-side ; and though it is five or six years 
since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, 
that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep 25 
it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by 
the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind 
travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the high- 
ways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and con- 
formity ! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but 3° 
rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, 
for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. 
I do not wish to go below now. 



326 WALDEN 

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if 
one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, 
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he 
will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. 
5 He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible 
boundary ; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin 
to establish themselves around and within him ; or the old 
laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more 
liberal sense, and he will hve with the license of a higher 

lo order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, 
the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and 
solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, 
nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in 
the air, your work need not be lost ; that is where 

15 they should be. Now put the foundations under 
them. 

It is a ridiculous demand which England and America 
make, that you shall speak so that they can understand 
you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so. As if that 

20 were important, and there were not enough to understand 
you without them. As if Nature could support but one 
order of understandings, could not sustain birds as well as 
quadrupeds, flying as well as creeping things, and hush 
and who, which Bright can understand, were the best 

25 English. As if there were safety in stupidity alone. I 
fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extra-vagant° 
enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow 
limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the 
truth of which I have been convinced. Extra vagance! 

30 it depends on how you are yarded. The migrating buffalo, 
which seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not ex- 
travagant like the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the 
cow-yard fence, and runs after her calf, in milking time. I 



CONCLUSION 327 

desire to speak somewhere without bounds ; like a man in 
a waking moment, to men in their waking moments ; for I 
am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to 
lay the foundation of a true expression. Who that has 
heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak s 
extravagantly any more forever? In view of the future 
or possible, we should live quite laxly and undefined in 
front, our outlines dim and misty on that side ; as our 
shadows reveal an insensible perspiration toward the sun. 
The volatile truth of our words should continually betray lo 
the inadequacy of the residual statement. Their truth is 
instantly translated° ; its literal monument alone remains. 
The words which express our faith and piety are not 
definite ; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankin- 
cense to superior natures . 1 5 

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, 
and praise that as common sense? The commonest 
sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by 
snoring. Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are 
once-and-a-half witted, with the half-witted, because we 20 
appreciate only a third part of their wit. Some would find 
fault with the morning-red, if they ever got up early 
enough. "They pretend," as I hear, ''that the verses of 
Kabir° have four different senses : illusion, spirit, intellect, 
and the exoteric doctrine of the Vedas ;" but in this part 25 
of the world it is considered a ground for complaint if a 
man's writings admit of more than one interpretation. 
While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not 
any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much 
more widely and fatally ? 3° 

I do not suppose that I have attained to obscurity, 
but I should be proud if no more fatal fault were found with 
my pages on this score than was found with the Walden 



328 WALDEN 

ice. Southern customers objected to its blue color, which 
is the evidence of its purity, as if it were muddy, and pre- 
ferred the Cambridge ice, which is white, but tastes of 
weeds. The purity men love is like the mists which 
5 envelop the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond. 
Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and 
moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with 
the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men. But what is 
that to the purpose ? A living dog° is better than a dead 

lo lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs 
to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that 
he can? Let every one mind his own business, and en- 
deavor to be what he was made. 

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, 

IS and in such desperate enterprises ? If a man does not keep 
pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a 
different drummer. Let him step to the music which he 
hears, however measured or far away. It is not important 
that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or an oak. 

20 Shall he turn his spring into summer ? If the condition of 
things which we were made for is not yet, what were any 
reality which we can substitute? We will not be ship- 
wrecked on a vain reality. . Shall we with pains erect a 
heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done 

25 vv^e shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far 
above, as if the former were not ? 

There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was dis- 
posed to strive after perfection. One day it came into his 
mind to make a staff. Having considered that in an im- 

30 perfect work time is an ingredient, but into a perfect work 
time does not enter, he said to himself, It shall be perfect 
in all respects, though I should do nothing else in my life. 
He proceeded instantly to the forest for wood, being re- 



CONCLUSION 329 

solved that it should not be made of unsuitable material ; 
and as he searched for and rejected stick after stick, his 
friends gradually deserted him, for they grew old in their 
works and died, but he grew not older by a moment. His 
singleness of purpose and resolution, and his elevated piety, 5 
endowed him, without his knowledge, with perennial youth. 
As he made no compromise with Time, Time kept out of his 
way, and only sighed at a distance because he could not 
overcome him. Before he had found a stock in all respects 
suitable the city of Kouroo was a hoary ruin, and he sat on 10 
one of its mounds to peel the stick. Before he had given 
it the proper shape the dynasty of the Candahars was at an 
end, and with the point of the stick he wrote the name 
of the last of that race in the sand, and then resumed his 
work. By the time he had smoothed and polished the staff j 5 
Kalpa was no longer the pole-star ; and ere he had put on 
the ferule and the head adorned with precious stones, 
Brahma had awoke and slumbered many times. But 
why do I stay to mention these things ? When the finish- 
ing stroke was put to his work, it suddenly expanded before 20 
the eyes of the astonished artist into the fairest of all the 
creations of Brahma. He had made a new system in 
making a staff, a world with full and fair proportions ; in 
which, though the old cities and dynasties had passed away, 
fairer and more glorious ones had taken their places. And 25 
now he saw by the heap of shavings still fresh at his 
feet, that, for him and his work, the former lapse of time 
had been an illusion, and that no more time had elapsed 
than is required for a single scintillation from the brain of 
Brahma to fall on and inflame the tinder of a mortal brain. 30 
The material was pure, and his art was pure ; how could 
the result be other than wonderful ? 

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so 



330 WALDEN 

well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For 
the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false 
position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we sup- 
pose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in 
5 two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to 
get out. In sane moments we regard only the facts, 
the case that is. Say what you have to say, not what 
you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. 
Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked 

lo if he had anything to say. ''Tell the tailors,'' said he, 
"to remember to make a knot in their thread before they 
take the first stitch." His companion's prayer is for- 
gotten. 

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do 

15 not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as 
you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The 
fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love 
your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some 
pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. 

20 The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms- 
house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow 
melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see 
but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have 
as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town's poor 

25 seem to me often to live the most independent lives of 
any. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive 
M'ithout misgiving. Most think that they are above 
being supported by the town; but it oftener happens 
that they are not above supporting themselves by dis- 

30 honest means, which should be more disreputable. Cul- 
tivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not 
trouble 3^ourself much to get new things, whether clothes 
or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things 



CONCLUSION 331 

do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep 
your thoughts. God will see that you do not want 
society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my 
days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to 
me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher 5 
said : " From an army of three divisions one can take 
away its general, and put it in disorder ; from the man 
the most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his 
thought." Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, 
to subject yourself to many influences to be played on ; it 10 
is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the 
heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness 
gather around us, "and lo ! creation widens to our view." 
We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us 
the wealth of Croesus, ° our aims must still be the same, 15 
and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you 
are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot 
bu}^ books and newspapers, for instance, you are but 
confined to the most significant and vital experiences; 
you are compelled to deal with the material which yields 20 
the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near 
the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from 
being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by 
magnanimit}^ on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy 
superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one 25 
necessary of the soul. 

I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose com.po- 
sition was poured a little alloy of bell metal. Often, 
in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears 
a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise 30 
of my contemporaries. My neighbors tell me of their 
adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what 
notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no 



332 WALDEN 

more interested in such things than in the contents of 
the Daily Times. The interest and the' conversation 
are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is 
a goose still, dress it as you will. They tell me of Cali- 
5 fornia and Texas, of England and the Indies, of the Hon. 

Mr. of Georgia or of Massachusetts, all transient 

and fleeting phenomena, till I am ready to leap from their 
court-yard like the Mameluke bey. I delight to come to 
my bearings, — not walk in procession with pomp and 

lo parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the 
Builder of the universe, if I may, — not to live in this 
restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, 
but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are 
men celebrating ? They are all on a committee of arrange- 

15 ments, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. 
God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his 
orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that 
which most strongly and rightfully attracts me ; — not 
hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less, — 

20 not suppose a case, but take the case that is ; to travel 
the only path I can, and that on which no power can 
resist me. It affords me no satisfaction to commence 
to spring an arch before I have got a solid foundation. 
Let us not play at kittly benders. ° There is a solid bottom 

25 everywhere. We read that the traveller asked the boy 
if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy 
replied that it had. But presently the traveller's horse 
sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, "I 
thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom." 

30 "So it has," answered the latter, "but you have not got 
halfway to it yet." So it is with the bogs and quicksands 
of society ; but he is an old boy that knows it. Only 
what is thought, said, or done at a certain rare coincidence 



CONCL USION 333 

is good. I would not be one of those who will foolishly 
drive a nail into mere lath and plastering; such a deed 
would keep me awake nights. Give me a hammer, and 
let me feel for the furrowing. Do not depend on the 
putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully 5 
that j'^ou can wake up in the night and think of your 
work with satisfaction, — a w^ork at which you would 
not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will help you 
God, and so only. Every nail driven should be as another 
rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on 10 
the work . 

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me 
truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine 
in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity 
and truth were not ; and I went away hungry from the 15 
inhospitable board. The hospitality w-as as cold as the 
ices. I thought that there was no need of ice to freeze 
them. They talked to me of the age of the wine and the 
fame of the vintage ; but I thought of an older, a newer, 
and purer wine, of a more glorious vintage, which they 20 
had not got, and could not buy. The style, the house and 
grounds and ''entertainment" pass for nothing with 
me. I called on the king, but he made me wait in his hall, 
and conducted" like a man incapacitated for hospitality. 
There was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a 25 
hollow tree. His manners were truly regal. I should 
have done better had I called on him. 

How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle 
and musty virtues, which any work would make imper- 
tinent ? As if one were to begin the day with long-suffer- 30 
ing, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes ; and in the after- 
noon go forth to practise Christian meekness and charity 
with goodness aforethought ! Consider the China pride 



334 WALBEN 

and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This genera- 
tion reclines a little to congratulate itself on being the 
last of an illustrious line ; and in Boston and London and 
Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks 
5 of its progress in art and science and literature with 
satisfaction. There are the Records of the Philosophi- 
cal Societies, and the public Eulogies of Great Men! 
It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue. 
"Yes, we have done great deeds, and sung divine songs, 

I o which shall never die," — that is, as long as ive can 
remember them. The learned societies and great men of 
Assyria, — where are they ? What youthful philosophers 
and experimentalists we are ! There is not one of my 
readers who has yet lived a whole human life. These 

15 may be but the spring months in the life of the race. If 
we have had the seven-5^ears^ itch, we have not seen the 
seventeen-year locust yet in Concord. We are acquainted 
with a mere pellicle° of the globe on which we hve. Most 
have not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped 

20 as many above it. We know not where we are. Beside, 
we are sound asleep nearly half our time. Yet we esteem 
ourselves wise, and have an established order on the sur- 
face. Trulj^, we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious 
spirits ! As I stand over the insect crawhng amid the 

25 pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to con- 
ceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will 
cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me 
who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its 
race some cheering information, I am reminded of the 

30 greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me, 
the human insect. 

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, 
and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only 



CONCLUSION 335 

suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the 
most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy 
and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, 
sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary 
and mean. We think that we can change our clothes 5 
only. It is said that the British Empire is very large 
and respectable, and that the United States are a first- 
rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls 
behind every man which can float the British Empire 
like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind. Who lo 
knows what sort of seventeen-year locust will next come 
out of the ground? The government of the world I 
live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner 
conversations over the wine. 

The life in us is like the water in the river. It may 15 
rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and 
flood the parched uplands ; even this may be the eventful 
year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not 
always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the 
banks which the stream anciently washed, before science 20 
began to record its freshets. Every one has heard the 
story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a 
strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf 
of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a 
farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and 25 
afterwards in Massachusetts, — from an egg deposited in 
the living tree many j^ears earlier still, as appeared by 
counting the annual layers beyond it ; which was heard 
gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the 
heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrec- 30 
tion and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? 
Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg 
has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of 



336 WALDEN 

woo.denness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at 
first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has 
been gradually converted into the semblance of its well- 
seasoned tomb, — heard perchance gnawing out now for 

5 years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round 
the festive board, — may unexpectedly come forth from 
amidst society's most trivial and handselled furniture, 
to enjoy its perfect summer life at last ! 

I do not say that John or Jonathan" will realize all 

lo this ; but such is the character of that morrow which 
mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light 
which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that 
day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day 
to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. 



NOTES 

1 : 4. Concord, Massachusetts, not to be confused with 
Concord, New Hampshire, is about twenty miles northwest 
of Boston. It is now easily accessible both by train and 
electric car. 

1 : 6. two years. Thoreau began to live at Walden Pond 
July 4, 1845. 

1 : 23. that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. 
That is, egotism is to be seen both in "most books "and in 
Walden; the " main difference " is that in Walden " I " 
is used frequently. 

2 : 2. I should not talk so much about myself, etc. For a 
more recent expression of the idea, see George Santayana's 
The Sense of Beauty, Part I, Section 8. "I care about 
myself because ' myself ' is a name for the things I have at 
heart." 

2 : 17. as you, i.e. as (concerning) you. 

2 : 27, Bramins sitting exposed to four fires. Oriental 
philosophies and religions had great fascination for Thoreau, 
as they did for Emerson and all the Concord school of 
thinkers. 

3 : 5. twelve labors of Hercules. See Bulfinch, Age of 
Fable (David McKay, Philadelphia, 1898), p. 178. 

3 : 9. lolas. lolaus, the faithful companion of Hercules. 
See Bulfinch, p. 179. 

3 : 14. for these, etc. In this clause Thoreau tells the 
reader why he has used the term " misfortune " above. 
z 337 



338 NOTES 

3 : 20. peck of dirt. The allusion is to the saying that 
*' Every man must eat a peck of dirt before he dies." 
3 : 26. Augean. See Bulfinch, p. 179. 

3 : 27. tillage. Cultivated land. The word is from the 
Anglo-Saxon verb tilian, to cultivate, to till. 

4 : 2. old book. See Matthew vi., 19, 20. 

4 : 6. Deucalion and Pyrrha. See Bulfinch, pp. 25, 26. 
4 : 8. Inde genus, etc. Ovid's Metamorphoses, I., 11. 414, 
415. 

4 : 19. factitious. From Latin factitius or facticius, 
made by art, artificial; in contradistinction to that pro- 
duced by nature. 

5 : 32. Negro Slavery. Thoreau, notwithstanding his 
expression here, took a bold stand with regard to slavery, 
refusing resolutely to pay taxes to a government that per- 
mitted it; he was not willing, he said, that his money 
should " buy a man, or a musket to shoot one with." In 
consequence of his refusal he was lodged for a night in the 
town jail at Concord. " Henry, why are you "here?" said 
Emerson, when he came to visit him. " Why are you not 
here?" was the reply. 

6 : 9. Squire Make-a-stir. Cf. Bunyan's use of vividly 
suggestive names in The Pilgrim's Progress. 

6 : 18. Wilberforce, William (1759-1833), the most con- 
spicuous English opponent of slavery. The Emancipation 
Bill was passed by Parliament a month after his death. 

6 : 20. green. Immature, inexperienced. 

6 : 33. chief end of man. 

" Question. ' What is the chief end of man? ' 
"Answer. 'Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to 
enjoy him forever.' " — The Shorter Catechism. 

7 -. 16. dry wood under a pot. Cf. De Quincey's famous 
characterization of the locomotive and " the pot-wallopings 



NOTES 339 

of the boiler "in " The Glory of Motion " in The English 
Mail Coach. 

7:18. Age is no better, etc. For a whimsical and lively 
treatment of this theme see Stevenson's " Crabbed Age and 
Youth." 

7 : 28. some thirty years. Thoreau was about twenty- 
eight when he went to live at Walden. 

8 : 2. Mentors, Mentor was the faithful monitor to 
whom Ulysses intrusted the education of his son Telemachus, 

8 : 3. vegetable. Thoreau was not always a strict vege- 
tarian. In writing to Colonel T. W. Higginson in 1858 he 
speaks of the provisions carried on one of his trips to the 
Maine woods. '' Perhaps you would like a few more de- 
tails. We used (three of us) exactly twenty-six pounds of 
hard bread, fourteen pounds of pork, three pouijds of coffee, 
twelve pounds of sugar (and could have used more), besides 
a little tea, Indian meal, and rice, — and plenty of berries 
and moose-meat. . . . For solid food, I decide that it is 
not worth the while to carry anything but hard bread and 
pork, whatever your tastes may be. These wear best, 
and you have no time nor dishes in which to cook anything 
else." — Familiar Letters of Henry David Thoreau, ed. by 
F. B. Sanborn (Boston, 1895). 

8 : 16. Evelyn, John (1620-1706), the famous diarist. He 
wrote much concerning gardening. 

8 : 18. praetors. See Seyffert's Dictionary of Classical 
Antiquities (1901), p. 512. 

8 : 21. Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 377 B.C.), a celebrated 
Greek physician, often spoken of as " the father of medicine." 

10 : 6. Confucius (550-478 b.c), celebrated Chinese 
philosopher. See Ency. Brit. 

10 : 22. grossest groceries. What is the derivation of 
these words? 



340 NOTES 

11 : 17. Darwin, Charles (1809-1882), the author of The 
Origin of Species. 

11 : 18. Tierra del Fuego. See map of South America. 

11 : 23. New Hollander. The name formerly applied 
to Australia was New Holland. 

11 : 26. Liebig. Baron Justus von Liebig (1803-1873), 
the German chemist, was professor at Giessen and, later, 
at Munich. 

12 : 19. Elysian. From Elysium, in Greek mythology, 
the abode of the blessed after death. 

14 : 15. radicle. Here used as synonym for root. 
14 : 21. esculents. From Latin esculentus, " eatable, good 
to eat." Esculent is often used for " edible vegetable." 

14 : 22. biennials. Plants that live for two years. 

15 : 23. notch it on my stick. An allusion to Thoreau's 
pencil-making, as to toe that line is to his surveying. What 
is the meaning of the word " tally "? See Cent. Diet. 

15 : 31. on their trail. This paragraph is probably the 
most beautiful, certainly the best known, expression of 
Thoreau's idealism, 

16 : 24. manna-wise. See Exodus xvi., especially v. 20. 
16 : 26. reporter to a journal. Thoreau's journal, to 

which he here alludes, was the great repository to which he 
committed from day to day the results of his observation 
and reflection. It extended from 1837 to within a few 
months of his death. From it he took many of his lectures, 
and the greater part of the two books published during his 
lifetime (A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and 
Walden). Since his death the same quarry has furnished, 
in the hands of editors, particularly Mr. H. G. O. Blake, 
several other volumes, such as Early Spring in Massachu- 
setts, Summer, Winter, and Autumn. 

i6 : 33. surveyor. Thoreau seems to have been a very 



NOTES 341 

careful and skilful surveyor. His services were in demand 
not only in Concord but elsewhere. 

17 : 18. sinecure. What is the derivation of this word? 

18 : 16. but I, i.e. but (that) I. 

18 : 32. bottoms. Ships. 

19 : 21. La Perouse. A French navigator, supposedly 
lost at sea in 1788. 

19 : 23. Hanno. A Carthaginian navigator and colo- 
nizer who visited the west coast of Africa in the fifth cen- 
tury B.C. 

19 : 27, tare and tret, and gauging. Tare, a deduction from 
the gross weight equivalent to the weight of the cask, box, 
etc. — tret, in the older commerce, was an allowance to the 
purchaser of four pounds in the hundred, after the deduction 
of the tare, in consideration of the expense of transporta- 
tion. — gauging, the art of ascertaining the capacity of casks, 
etc. 

19 : 33. Neva. A river in Russia; St. Petersburg is built 
on the marshy land about the mouths of the Neva. See 
map of St. Petersburg in Century Atlas. 

20 : 7. Clothing. Cf. the passage which follows with 
Carlyle's treatment of the subject in Sartor Resartus, which 
appeared in 1833 and had great influence upon the New 
England Transcendentalists. 

21 : 20. Pfeiffer. Madame Ida Reyer Pfeiffer (1797- 
1858), a celebrated Austrian traveller, went round the world 
twice, the first time in 1846-1848. The account of her 
journey (Fine Frauenfahrt urn die Welt) appeared in 1850. 
Though much of Walden was written during Thoreau's 
stay at Walden Pond (1845-1847), additions were made from 
time to time up to 1854, the year of publication. 

22:20. men want. Need. 

22 : 32. cashiered. Dismissed, cast off, discarded. 



342 NOTES 

23 : 7 cortex. Bark. 

23 : 29. Fates. Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. See 
Bulfinch, p. 476. 

24 : 11. Graces. Euphrosyne, Aglaia, and Thalia. See 
Bulfinch, p. 479. — Parcae. See note on Fates above. 

24 : 24. Egyptian wheat. The allusion is to the stories, 
now discredited, of " mummy wheat " which germinated 
after remaining thousands of years in the tombs of 
Egypt. 

25 : 18. most fashionable. Perhaps a slip for " more 
fashionable." This use of " most " was formerly common 
even among good writers. Jane Austen {Emma, Ch. XLIX) 
writes " infinitely the most worthy of the two." 

26 : 2. Samuel Laing (1780-1868). Traveller; trans- 
lator of the Heimskringla, the Icelandic chronicle of the 
kings of Norway. 

26 : 10. domestic. What is the derivation? 

26 : 18. gazettes. Newspapers; used loosely of Indian 
writing. What is the etymology of " gazette " ? Cf . the word 
" picayune " as used in the name of a newspaper, the New 
Orleans Picayune. 

27 : 27. Indians. Thoreau was deeply interested in 
Indian history and in the Indian character. For an illumi- 
nating essay on the "wildness" in his nature, see Mr. Bur- 
roughs's " Thoreau 's Wildness " in Literary Values (Boston, 
1902). 

" Everything connected with the Indians had a strange 
interest and fascination for him; ... he several times 
visited Maine in order to study their language and habits, 
and never failed to converse with the wandering parties who 
sometimes pitched their tents for a few weeks on the banks 
of the Concord River. . . . This remarkable sympathy, 
on the part of one of the most advanced of modern thinkers, 



NOTES 343 

with the sphit of a savage and decaying race is accounted for 
by Thoreau's strong natural incHnation to the uncultivated 
and wild. He loved the sea and all desert places; preferred 
the wild apple to the cultured orchard, and the dreariest 
swamp to the most fragrant garden; and it cheered him to 
see the young forest-pines springing up anew in the fertile 
corn-land. The Indian, the human representative of wild 
life in New England, thus attracted his sympathies, just as 
the sympathies of George Borrow were attracted to the roam- 
ing gypsy tribes." — H. S. Salt's Life of Thoreau, pp. 97,98. 
During the closing months of his life he was preparing ar- 
ticles on the Indians for the Atlantic Monthly, and his last 
audible words were " moose " and " Indian." 

28 : 19. Gookin, Daniel (1612-1678), became superintend- 
ent of the Indians in Massachusetts Colony in 1656. The 
book to which Thoreau refers, Historical Collections of the 
Indians of Massachusetts, was first published in 1792. 

29 : 6. its. The antecedent is family. 

29 : 30. Rumford fireplace. An improved type of fire- 
place first constructed by Benjamin Thompson, Count 
Rumford (1753-1814). — back plastering. Formerly build- 
ers plastered between the studding; thick paper now ordi- 
narily takes the place of the " back " or "first " plaster. 

29 : 31. Venetian blinds. " Window-shades made of thin 
laths of wood attached to strips of webbing." 

31 : 1. What mean ye, etc. See Ezekiel xviii., 2, 3, 4; 
Mark xiv., 7. 

32 : 10. eclat. French, " pomp, display, dash." 
32 : 11. suent. Suant, smooth, even. 

32 : 16. hair springe. A noose or snare; a gin. This 
form of the word is now unusual. See Hamlet, Act I, 
Sc. 3,1. 115. 

32 : 20. Chapman, George (1559-1634), Elizabethan poet 



344 NOTES 

and dramatist, author of Bussy d'Ambois (1607), is chiefly 
known for his translation of the Iliad and Odyssey. Thoreau 
was well read in English sixteenth and seventeenth century 
authors. For quotation see Ccesar and Pompey (p. 376 of 
Vol. I, Chapman's Works, Chatto and Windus). 
32 : 25. and it be, i.e. it (may) be, etc. 

32 : 27. Momus. The god of censure and faultfinding. 
See Bulfinch, pp. 14, 488. — Minerva. Goddess of wisdom. 
See index of Bulfinch. 

33 : 32. last improvement. The Fitchburg Railroad had 
but recently been built when Thoreau began to live at 
Walden. 

34 : 3. and the, i.e. and (where) the. 

35 : 5. glow-shoes. Perhaps a New England folk-ety- 
mology for galoshes. See goloeshoes in Murray's New Eng- 
lish Dictionary. 

35 : 19. Aurora. The goddess of the dawn. 

35 : 20. Memnon. The " column of Memnon " gave forth 
music when the rays of the sun fell upon it in the morning. 
See note on p. 352. 

35 : 31. Sardanapalus or Asurbanipal (668-626 b.c), an 
Assyrian king whose reign was notable for material pros- 
perity. 

36 : 8. Jonathan. " Brother Jonathan," the name ap- 
plied to the people of the United States as a whole. It 
originated, perhaps, in Washington's saying, at a time 
when the American army was in great need of supplies, "We 
must consult Brother Jonathan," i.e. Jonathan Trumbull, 
governor of Connecticut, in whose sagacity Washington had 
great confidence. Cf. the name " John Bull," which origi- 
nated with Dr. Arbuthnot (The History of John Bull), the 
witty member of the Scriblerus Club to whom Pope addressed 
his " Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," 



NOTES 345 

36 : 27. agri-culture. What is the derivation? 

37 : 17. factitious. See note on p. 338. 

37 : 30. Old Johnson. Edward Johnson (1599-1672) 
accompanied Governor Winthrop to New England in 1630, 
and became prominent in Massachusetts political life. He 
wrote a rambling but quaint and interesting history of the 
country, published in London in 1654, under the title of 
Wonder-working Providence of Zion's Saviour in New 
England. 

38 : 7. New Netherland. The old name for the colony 
which later became New York. 

40:3. The owner. Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888); 
pedler, school-teacher, and finally dean of the Concord 
School of Philosophy. He was the father of Louisa May 
Alcott, author of Little Women, etc. There is an account 
of him in Walden ; see p. 270. 

40 : 18. winter of man's discontent. Cf. 

" Now is the winter of our discontent 
Made glorious summer by this sun of York." 

— King Richard III, Act I, Sc. 1. 

41 : 20. tenoned. Both the verb and noun (tenon) have 
become obsolete. Cf. Exodus xxvi., 19. 

44 : 8. raisers. Among them were George William Curtis 
and the Amos Bronson Alcott mentioned above. 

44 : 11. 4th of July. " A significant and auspicious date 
for the commencement of such an undertaking." — H. S. 
Salt. 

45 : 17. ninth part. An allusion to the saying, " It takes 
nine tailors to make one man." On the origin of the ex- 
pression, see Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable under 
" Tailors." 

46 : 8. Trinity Church. Lower Broadw^ay, New York. 



346 NOTES 

The present structure was completed about 1846, and was 
therefore much talked of at the time Thoreau was writing 
Walden. 

46 : 22. beauty of life. The thought here expressed was 
fully treated by Ruskin, one of the few modern authors whom 
Thoreau admired. 

49 : 7. Cambridge College. Thoreau entered Harvard 
College in 1833, occupying in succession Hollis 20, 32, 31, 
and 23 during his undergraduate life. 

49 : 12. noisy neighbors. For an amusing account of 
student disturbances, see a letter to Thoreau by a classmate, 
quoted in Mr. F. B. Sanborn's Henry D. Thoreau (Boston, 
1882), p. 55. 

51 : 3. Institute. The Lowell Institute, Boston. Founded 
by John Lowell, Jr. Lectures by eminent men have been 
given since 1839. 

51 : 12. Adam Smith (1723-1790). Scotch political 
economist; the author of Inquiry into the Nature and Causes 
of the Wealth of Nations (1776), an epoch-making book in 
the history of political economy. 

51 : 13. Ricardo, David (1772-1823). Economist of 
Jewish descent, member of English House of Parliament, 
and author of Principles of Political Economy (1817). — 
Say, Jean Baptiste (1767-1823). French economist who 
was much influenced by Smith's Wealth of Nations. 

52 : 1. Princess Adelaide (1792-1849). Married in 1818 
the Duke of Clarence, who later became William IV. 

52 : 6. Flying Childers. A race-horse, famous in the 
early part of the eighteenth century. He was never beaten, 

53 : 18. brothers of mine. The pity and tenderness of 
Thoreau's nature, though somewhat disguised by his affec- 
tation of stoicism, are evident to the careful reader; indeed, 
it may be said that they are more moving because of the 



NOTES 347 

habitual sternness of his manner. The impression produced 
by Emerson's selection of Letters to Various Persons by Henry 
D. Thoreau should be corrected by the consideration of San- 
born's Familiar Letters of Henry D. Thoreau (Boston, 1895). 

54 : 30. Arthur Young (1741-1820), an English economist, 
"wrote much on the subject of scientific agriculture. He was 
made secretary of the Board of Agriculture in 1793. Read- 
ers of Adam Bede (Ch. XVI) will remember that Arthur 
Donnithorne studied him. 

56 : 22. Bhagvat-Geeta or Bhagavadgita. A Sanskrit 
poem written about the first century of our era and later 
incorporated in the great epic Mahabharata. It is *' charac- 
terized by great loftiness of thought and beauty of expres- 
sion." Thoreau was very familiar with it in translation, and 
often quotes from it. In his Journal (Vol. IV, p. 152) he 
writes : " It should not be by their architecture but by their 
abstract thoughts that a nation should seek to commemorate 
itself. How much more admirable is the Bhagvat-Geeta 
than all the ruins of the East." 

56 : 28. Arcadia. A district in ancient Greece proverbial 
for its rural simplicity. Thoreau visited it through his 
imagination. 

57 : 22. Vitruvius (first century b.c). A Roman archi- 
tect and engineer who wrote the only Roman treatise on 
architecture that has survived. 

60 : 10. philosophy of India. " His (Thoreau's) Indian 
studies never went deep, technically; into the philological 
discussion as to whether a-b, ab, is Sanscrit, or ' What is 
Om? ' he entered not. But no one relished the Bhagvat- 
Geet better, or the good sentences from the Vishnu Purana. 
He loved the laws of Menu, the Vishnu Sarma, Saadi, and 
similar books." — Ellery Channing, Thoreau: Poet- Natu- 
ralist (new ed., Boston, 1902), p. 50. 



348 NOTES 

61 : 32. cerealian. Pertaining to cereals — a rare use 
of the word; it has reference usually to Ceres, the goddess 
of agriculture, or to the Cerealia, festivals in honor of the 
goddess. 

63 : 18. chips. Mr. F. H. Allen points out that this is from 
"New England's Annoyances." "Written towards 1630. 
The oldest known composition written by an American 
colonist." See Fugitive Poetry, Chandos Classics. 

63 : 19. grossest of groceries. Cf. p. 10 for this play on 
the etymology of these words. 

64 : 14. all mortar. That is, " for all the means of grind- 
ing " that he had ? Cf. "for all fruit," p. 265. 

65 : 2. Spaulding's. A family then living in Carlisle, 
not far from Concord. 

65 : 8. exuviae. Cast-off skins, feathers, or shells of ani- 
mals. 

65 : 14. lucky fox. In ^Esop's Fables see the fable " The 
Fox Who Had Lost His Tail." Thoreau means that the fox 
was lucky in that he could never again be caught by the tail. 

65 : 26. trig. Trim, neat. 

66 : 29. The evil, etc. See Julius Coesar, Act I, Sc. 2. 
.67 : 14. Bartram, William (1739-1823). Botanist and 

ornithologist. Published Travels through North and South 
Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida (1791). 

68 : 5. Mexicans. For an eloquent and informing pas- 
sage on the Mexican festival here mentioned, see Prescott's 
Conquest of Mexico (New York, 1843), Vol. I, p. 125. 

68 : 13. revelation. Though Thoreau refused to pay 
church rates and though he differed radically from the reli- 
gious leaders of his day, it is obvious from passages such as 
this that he was not irreligious. 

69 : 8. The flocks of Admetus. Apollo, enraged at the 
death of his son, whom Jupiter had slain with a thunderbolt 



NOTES 349 

at the request of Pluto, shot his arrows at the Cyclops, the 
innocent forgers of the thunderbolt. Jupiter punished 
Apollo by compelling him to serve Admetus, king of Thessaly, 
for one year as shepherd of his flocks. The story is a favor- 
ite one with Thoreau. See Familiar Letters, pp. 51, 52, 
269, and 410. 

70 : 15. my mode of living. Thoreau opposed the idea 
that any one mode of life was suited to the moral and 
spiritual development of all men. He distrusted the Brook 
Farm and the Fruitlands experiments, and he distrusted 
quite as much any attempt to apply his own programme to 
the lives of other persons. Each man, he felt, must see to 
it that he lived the " uncommitted life " — the details were 
relatively unimportant. 

73 : 6. Robin Goodfellow. Puck. A merry domestic 
spirit of Scandinavian origin, probably introduced into 
England by the Danes. See Shakespeare's Midsummer 
Night's Dream; Milton's L' Allegro, 11. 105-114. 

73 : 14. Phaeton. See Ovid's Metamorphoses, I., 11. 
748-779; II., 11. 1-339 ; Bulfinch, pp. 51-59. 

74 : 4. Howard, John (1726-1790), was instrumental in 
effecting important prison reforms. While high sheriff of 
Bedfordshire, England, he became interested in prison condi- 
tions and travelled over Europe in order to make a compara- 
tive study of penal institutions. His State of the Prisons in 
England and Wales (1777) was widely read. 

74 : 11. Jesuits. Members of the Roman Catholic " So- 
ciety of Jesus," founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1534. The 
Jesuit missionaries labored among the American Indians 
with great zeal. 

75 : 8. slop-shop. A shop where cheap clothing, bedding, 
etc., are sold (usually to seamen). 

76 : 2. Newton, Sir Isaac (1642-1727) elaborated the 



350 NOTES 

universal law of gravitation and discovered the method of 
fluxions; perhaps the greatest of English mathematicians. 
See Wordsworth's oft-quoted characterization of his mind 
in The Prelude, Book Third: — 

"... I could behold 
The antechapel where the statue stood 
Of Newton with his prism and silent face, 
The marble index of a mind forever 
Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone." 

76 : 5. Penn, William (1644-1718), celebrated Quaker 
minister and founder of Pennsylvania. — Howard. See note 
on p. 349. — Mrs. Fry. Ehzabeth Gurney Fry (1780-1845), a 
Quakeress whose achievement in prison reform was notable. 
See portrait, with poem by Lewis Morris, in Quaker Poems 
(Philadelphia, 1893), p. 100. 

78 : 16. Sadi, or Shaikh Muslih al Din (thirteenth cen- 
tury). Persian poet. His Gulistan, a collection of odes, 
is his most carefully wrought work. See Emerson's Saadi. 

78 : 27. Dijlah. See map of Turkey-in-Asia. 

79 : Title. Complemental Verses. This title and the sub- 
title are Thoreau's. The lines are from Carew's Coelum 
Brittanicum, a Masque (performed at Whitehall, 1634). 
See Poems of Thomas Carew (London, 1899), in " Muses' 
Library," p. 208. 

79 : 6. right. Carew wrote rigid. 

79 : 28. T. Carew. Thomas Carew (c. 1598-c. 1639), a 
Caroline poet possessed of great facility and not lacking in 
charm. See his famous " Ask me no more." " They say 
that Carew was a laborious writer, but his poems do not 
show it. They are finished, but do not show the marks of 
the chisel." — Journal, Vol. I, p. 465. 



NOTES 351 

81 : 12. Hollowell place. An attractive farm still. Now 
occupied by a Mr. Brooks. 

81 : 14. carry it on or off with. Carry on the work of the 
farm, and carry off, appropriate, the essential, spiritual 
value of the property. 

81 : 31. I am monarch. From William Cowper's " Verses 
supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk." — survey. 
Allusion to Thoreau's work as surveyor. 

82 : 29. like Atlas. Atlas bore the earth on his shoulders. 
See Bulfinch, p. 181. 

83 : 10. uncommitted. Perhaps Thoreau's most memo- 
rable pun. For his imprisonment, see p. 172. 

83 : 13. Old Cato. Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.), 
the censor. A Roman statesman and author who endeavored 
to inculcate the morals and simplicity of the earlier days of 
the Republic. He was largely concerned in the instigation 
of the Third Punic War, closing each speech in the senate 
with " Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam." — "Cul- 
tivator." The Boston Cultivator, founded in 1838 ; an ag- 
ricultural journal. 

83 : 26. ode to dejection. Coleridge's powerful " Ode to 
Dejection " was written in 1802. See the Poetical Works 
of Coleridge (ed. by J. D. Campbell, New York, 1899), p. 159. 

84 : 22. the boat. The blue and green boat which 
Thoreau and his brother built, and in which they made the 
famous journey recorded in A Week on the Concord and Merri- 
mack Rivers. Hawthorne owned it at one time. See the 
introduction to Mosses from an Old Manse. 

84 : 32. The Harivansa or Harivansha. A Sanskrit poem, 
"purporting to be a part of the Mahabharata but really of 
much later date." 

87 : 28. Every morning. " My most sacred and memor- 
able life is commonly on awaking in the morning. I fre- 



352 NOTES 

quently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unre- 
membered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had jour- 
neyed to its native place, and, in the act of reentering its 
native body, had diffused an Elysian fragrance around." — 
Journal, Vol. II, p. 213. 

*' Most men have forgotten that it was ever morning; 
but a few serene memories, healthy and wakeful natures, 
there are who assure us that the sun rose clear, heralded by 
the singing of birds, — this very day's sun, which rose be- 
fore Memnon was ready to greet it." — Journal, Vol. I, p. 386. 

89 : 5. Memnon. The statue of the Egyptian king 
Amenophis III (supposed by the Greeks to be that of Mem- 
non, a hero of the Trojan war) emitted music when the 
sunlight fell upon it in the morning. See The American 
Cyclopcedia under " Memnon." 

90 : 16. next excursion. In another life. 

91 : 7. German Confederacy. The German Confedera- 
tion constituted in 1815 gave way to the North German 
Confederation in 1866; this in turn was replaced by the Em- 
pire in 1871. 

92 : 19. setting the bell. Ringing the bell so energetically 
as to make it stand mouth upward. 

93 : 6. Wachito River. Perhaps the river now spelled 
Washita. Near Hot Springs, Arkansas. 

93 : 21. Western Railroad. A railroad from Worcester 
to Albany; now a part of the " Boston and Albany." 

94 : 10. revolution of 1649. The Civil War, which re- 
sulted in the death of Charles I and the establishment of the 
Commonwealth in 1649, began in 1642. 

95 : 16. more clearly. For this view of childhood, see 
Henry Vaughn's " The Retreat " and Wordsworth's " In- 
timations of Immortality." It was a favorite idea with the 
Transcendentalists, 



NOTES 353 

96:1. "Mill-dam." "The centre of Concord village, 
where the post-oflQce and shops are — so called from an old 
mill-dam where now is a street." — F. B. Sanborn. 

96 : 33. tied to the mast. Ulysses, following the instruc- 
tions of Circe, escaped the lure of the Sirens. See Bulfinch, 
p. 302. 

97 : 12. point d'appui. French for " basis, support." 

97 : 14. Nilometer, a gauge for determining the height of 
the water in the Nile. An ancient one is mentioned by 
Herodotus, 

97 : 15. Realometer. A coined word. Thoreau puns on 
Nilometer as if Latin nil (nihil). 

97 : 19. cimeter. Scimitar. 

97 : 31. not as wise. Cf. note on p. 352, 

99 : 3. their. The antecedent is men. 

100 : 2. esoteric. " Designed for, and understood by the 
initiated only; said of the private and more recondite in- 
structions and doctrines of philosophers." — Webster. 

100 : 12. Homer. See Ency. Brit, for articles on Homer 
and ^schylus. 

101 : 5. Delphi and Dodona. The oracle of Apollo was at 
Delphi ; that of Zeus at Dodona. See Cent. Diet. 

102 : 24. Alexander the Great. See Encij. Brit. 

103 : 30. never yet been printed in English, i.e. transla- 
tions are inadequate, not fairly representing the original. 

104 : 10. Zendavestas. The Zendavesta or, more prop- 
erly, Avesta, is the Bible of Zoroastrianism. 

104 : 30. form. Bench (in a schoolroom). 

105 : 4. town. Reading and North Reading are towns 
within twenty miles of Concord. 

106 : 3. deliquium. " A failure of vital force; syncope," 
— Cent. Diet. 

107 : 16. manikins. What is the derivation? Cf. the 

2a 



354 NOTES 

use of the diminutive -kin in lambkin, catkin, Thompkins, 
etc. 

107 : 32. tit-men. Small men. From " tit," which is 
from Icelandic " tittr " (small bird), applied to several 
species of small birds. 

108 : 19. Zoroaster or Zarathushtra, the founder of the 
Perso-Iranian national ^religion. Zoroastrianism is still the 
religion of the Parsees in Bombay. 

109 : 14. Abelard, Peter (1079-1142). Notable French 
scholar who assisted in the founding of scholastic theology. 
See Pope's Epistle from Eloise to Abelard. 

110 : 4. "Olive-Branches." The Boston Olive Branch, 
Devoted to Christianity, Mutual Rights, Polite Literature, 
General Intelligence, Agriculture and the Arts was established 
in 1836 under the auspices of the Protestant Methodist 
Church. It was a weekly of wide circulation. 

110 : 7. Redding & Co. A bookstore at 8 State Street, 

Boston, long ago destroyed. 

112:18. clock. Cf. ^s Fom LiA;e /^ Act III, Sc. 2,1. 282: — 

" Rosalind. ' I pray you, what is 't o'clock? ' 

" Orlando. ' You should ask me what time o' day; there's 

no clock in the forest.' " 

114 : 28. tantivy. A rush, violent flight. From the 

adverb tantivy ; supposed to be an imitation of the sound 

of the hunting-horn. 

116 : 24. iron horse. Cf. Job xxxix., 19-25. 

117 : 18. drill-barrow. A machine for planting grain, etc. 

118 : 22. Atropos. See note on p. 342. 

118 : 28. Tell, Wilhelm, who was " ordered to place an 
apple on the head of his little son and shoot it off." See 
Schiller's play, Wilhelm Tell. Variants of the story are found 
in several German-Scandinavian literatures. See, for ex- 
ample, the ballads " Adam Bell," " Clym of the Clough," and 



NOTES 355 

"William of Cloudesly " (conveniently found in Old English 
Ballads and Folk Songs, ed. by W. D. Armes. New York, 
1908). 

119 : 5. Buena Vista, a battle in the Mexican War, Febru- 
ary 27, 1847, in which the American army under General 
Taylor was victorious. 

119 : 28. Long Wharf or Boston Pier. Still an important 
wharf in Boston. See Bacon's Dictionary of Boston (Hough- 
ton, Mifflin & Co., 1886). " Whoever has been down to the 
end of Long Wharf, and walked through Quincy Market has 
seen Boston" (Thoreau in Cape Cod (Manuscript ed., 
p. 268)). Note the implied indifference to Beacon Street. 

120 : 13. Thomaston lime. Town near Rockland, Maine. 
120:14. Slacked. A pun? 

121 : 4. dun fish, i.e. dunfish; fish cured or dunned. In 
the process of dunning, the fish assumes a brown, or dun, 
color. 

121 : 7. Spanish main, " formerly the northeast coast of 
South America, between the Orinoco River and the Isthmus 
of Panama, and the adjoining part of the Caribbean Sea." 

121 : 20. Cuttingsville. In Rutland County, Vermont. 

122 : 3. great ammiral. See Milton's Paradise Lost, 
I, 1. 292, et seq. Milton's spelling is more nearly correct 
than our admiral. The word is from the Arabic amir-al- 
bahr, commander of the sea, and has no connection with 
the word "admire." See Kittredge and Greenough's Words 
and their Ways (New York, 1901), p. 108. 

122 : 5. thousand hills. See Psalms 1., 10. 
122 : 11. bell-wether. Jocose for locomotive. 
122 : 13. skip like rams. See Psalms cxiv., 4. 

122 : 19. Peterboro' Hills. In Hillsboro County, New 
Hampshire. 

123 : 11, Lincoln, Acton, and Bedford are all within a few 



356 NOTES 

miles of Walden Pond. Concord is a little over a mile 
northwest. 

124 : 18, bar, of music. 

124 : 29. Ben Jonsonian. Ben Jonson (1573-1637), the 
greatest of the dramatists contemporary with Shakespeare, 
wrote The Alchemist, Every Man in his Humour, etc. 

126 : 8. usnea. A small genus of lichens of which the 
common " hanging moss " is one. 

126:21. Stygian. From Styx; in Greek mythology, a 
mighty river in the lower world. 

126 : 30. aldermanic. Slow, pompous; perhaps merely 
fat. 

127 : 4. mark. An allusion to the old peg-tankard, 
which contained marks or pegs to indicate the levels to which 
the successive draughts should lower the liquor. 

127 : 32. healthy, wealthy, and wise. The form of the 
proverb now common — 

" Early to bed and early to rise 
Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise" — 

comes from Benjamin Franklin's (1760-1790) Poor Richard's 
Almanac. In slightly different forms it appears as early as 
the sixteenth century. 

128 : 1. Chanticleer, the name of the cock in the old ani- 
mal epic of Reynard the Fox; from the Old French chanter, 
to sing, and cler, clear. Chaucer uses the term in " The 
Nun's Priest's Tale." 

130 : 32. pouts. Hornpout, catfish. 

131 : 3. to darkness and to me. See Gray's " Elegy in a 
Country Churchyard," stanza 1. 

131 : 14. ^olian music. From ^Eolus, the god of winds 
in Greek mythology; used here in the sense of " wind 
music." See "iEolian harp" in Cent, Diet, 



NOTES 357 

133 : 24. Beacon Hill. An elevation north of the Com- 
mon in Boston. The former location of the ancient beacon 
from which it is named is marked by a monument. 

133 : 25. Five Points. In New York, northeast of City 
Hall. Formerly very populous, but now a park. 

134 : 6. Brighton. A town near Boston. 

135 : 9. Indra. In the theology of the Vedas, the chief 
god of the air; the favorite god of the Indo- Aryan tribes. 

135 : 24. wholesome to be alone. The reader should re- 
member that some of the Transcendentalists favored the 
phalanstery. See Mr. Lindsey Swift's Brook Farm. In 
such communal experiments as those of Fruitlands, A. 
Bronson Alcott's enterprise in the town of Harvard, near 
Concord, and Brook Farm, Ripley's undertaking in West 
Roxbury, he, Hke Emerson, had little faith. 

136 : 22. sociable. A gathering for social purposes, par- 
ticularly a '' church social." 

137 : 20. Mill Brook. A small brook a little north of 
Walden Pond, running westward through Concord. Ellery 
Channing wrote a poem about it. 

137 : 24. occasional visits. Compare the mythical ele- 
ment in this paragraph with that in the paragraph printed 
on the title-page. 

137 : 33. Goffe or Whalley. William Goffe (1605-1679) 
and his father-in-law, Edward Whalley (1620-1678), promi- 
nent in the Commonwealth under Cromwell and concerned 
in the death of Charles I, fled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, 
in 1660. Excepted from the act of indemnity, they were 
compelled to leave Cambridge, and lived in hiding, first near 
New Haven, Connecticut, then at Hadley, Massachusetts. 
For a treatment of them in fiction, see Scott's Peveril of the 
Peak, also Cooper's The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish. 

138 : 4. simples. Medicinal plants. Explain the appli- 



358 NOTES 

cation of the term "simple" to a plant (see Diet.). For 
an account of an interesting simple-gatherer, see the chap- 
ters on Mrs. Todd in the late Miss Jewett's delightful The 
Country of the Pointed Firs. 

138 : 25. old Parrs. Thomas Parr, known as " Old 
Parr," died in 1635 at the reputed age of one hundred and 
fifty-two! There seems no doubt that he was considerably- 
over one hundred. See Chambers's Book of Days, Novem- 
ber 15. Not to be confused; with Dr. Samuel Parr, the early 
nineteenth-century scholar, who, according to De Quincey, 
gloried in " inflicting his eye " upon people. 

138 : 28. Acheron. The old name for the Gurla, a 
river in Greece. In classical mythology, a river in Hades. 
— Dead Sea. A salt lake sixteen miles southeast of Jeru- 
salem. Though the Jordan flows into it, there is no 
outlet. It occupies by tradition the site of Sodom and the 
" other cities of the plain " (see Genesis xix. for the ac- 
count of their destruction). Consult also The Voyages and 
Travels of Sir John Maundeville, Ch. IX. 

139 : 5. Hygeia. The goddess of health. 

139 : 6. iEsculapius. God of medicine, son of Apollo. 
See Gayley, p. 130. 

139 : 10. wild lettuce. Juno gave birth to Hebe after 
eating wild lettuce, so that Ovid speaks of her, not as 
Jupiter's daughter, but as his step-daughter (Metamor- 
phoses, IX). 

140 : 23. Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House. The 
Tremont House was a noted Boston hotel on Tremont Street, 
built in 1828. The Astor House, Broadway, New York, 
is still standing. Middlesex House, a hotel in Concord. A 
view of the last may be seen in Barber's Historical Collec- 
tions (Worcester, 18-40). 

141 ; 6. ricochet motion, The bounding action of a mi§- 



NOTES 359 

sile passing across a smooth surface, as a " skipping stone," 
" ducks and drakes." 

142 : 13. more than if, i.e. (no) more than (there would 
have been) if eating, etc. 

142 : 27. Cerberus. The dog that guards the entrance 
to Hades. See Bulfinch, p. 470; Gayley, p. 238. 

142 : 32. Spenser, Edmund (1552-1599), one of the great- 
est of English poets, published his world-famous Faerie 
Queen in 1590 and later. 

143 : 4. best contentment has. Faerie Queen, Book I, 
Canto 1, Stanza. 35. 

143 : 5. Winslow, Edward (1595-1655), one of the May- 
flower worthies. He conducted negotiations with Massa- 
soit in 1621, making for the purpose a journey inland which 
was the first attempt to explore the interior. On one occa- 
sion he saved Massasoit's life by skilful medical treatment. 
His Good News from New England aroused much interest 
abroad in the new colony. 

144 : 19. Canadian. Thoreau writes in his Journal 
(Vol. I, p. 365) : " Who should come to my lodge but a true 
Homeric boor, one of those Paphlagonian men. Alek 
Therien, he called himself." Of. this portrait in Walden 
with that of Uncle Zeb in Lowell's A Moosehead Journal. 
Which is the more lifelike? 

144 : 33. should greatly grieve. Iliad, Book XVI, 
Achilles is about to send his friend Patroclus, dressed in the 
armor of Achilles, against the Trojans. 

146 : 3. by gosh. Note Thoreau's careful realism in 
reproducing Therien 's oaths in all their variety. Gosh, 
like Gorrappit (p. 147), Golly, Gorry, Gad, Goodness, etc., is 
an instance of euphemism in oaths, and illustrates the 
manner in which human nature secures the satisfaction of 
profanity without its guilt. Cf. Odd's bodkins (God's 



360 NOTES 

" little body," the eucharist), Zounds (God's wounds, i.e. 
Christ's wounds), Gadzooks (God's hooks, the nails with 
which Christ was nailed to the cross), etc. See Greenough 
and Kittredge's Words and Their Ways, p. 304. 

149 : 11, pecunia. What is the derivation of pecuniary? 
Cf . the derivation of fee. What do these words suggest as 
to the early forms of wealth? 

149 : 21. Plato's man. According to Diogenes Laertius 
(c. 200 A.D.), Plato defined man as a " two-legged animal 
without feathers." 

153 : 14. committed. See note on p. 351. 

153 : 32. com-munity. What is the derivation? 

154 : 22. had communication. Thomas Cholmondeley 
(pronounced Chumly), of Overleigh, Cheshire, England, was 
the one Englishman with whom Thoreau became intimate. 
In 1855 Cholmondeley presented Thoreau with a collection of 
books on Indian philosophy. See Salt, pp. 95, 115, 116. 
For letters of Cholmondeley to Thoreau, see Atlantic 
Monthly, December, 1893. See also Index to Familiar 
Letters of Henry D. Thoreau. 

155 : 9. Antaeus. He was invincible so long as he was in 
contact with " mother earth." See Bulfinch, p. 181; Gay- 
ley, p. 238. 

155 : 20. effete. Exhausted, incapable. 

156 : 5. my flute. Thoreau was a skilful player on the 
flute. See Salt, p. 89. Louisa M. Alcott's exquisite lines 
on " Thoreau's Flute," beginning — 

"We, sighing, said, 'Our Pan is dead; 
His pipe hangs mute beside the river; — 
Around it wistful sunbeams quiver, 
But music's airy voice is fled' " — 

may be found in the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1863. 



NOTES 361 

156 : 19. arrow-heads. Thoreau made a considerable 
collection of arrow-heads, which he presented to the Boston 
Society of Natural History. They are now in the Peabody 
Museum at Cambridge. 

156 : 30. dust upon their heads. A token of humiliation. 
See Job ii., 12; Lamentations ii., 10. 

158 : 1. dobbin. What is the derivation? Cf. the proper 
names Dobson and Dobbs. 

158 : 10. Mr. Coleman's. Mr. Albert Matthews suggests 
that this is the Rev. Henry Colman (1785-1849), who pub- 
lished four reports on the agriculture of Massachusetts. 

158 : 23. Ranz des Vaches. "A strain of an irregular 
description, which in some parts of Switzerland is sung or 
blown on the Alpine horn in June to call the cattle from the 
valleys to the higher pastures." — Grove's Dictionary of 
Music and Musicians. 

158 : 32. Paganini, Nicolo (1782-1840), an extraordinary 
Italian violinist, celebrated for his performances on the 
single G-string. 

" He ambled awkward on the stage, the while 
Across the waiting audience swept a smile; 

With clumsy touch, when first he drew the bow, 
He snapped a string, the audience tittered low. 

Another broke! Off flies another string! 
With laughter now the circling galleries ring. 

Once more! The third string breaks its quivering strands 
And hisses greet the player as he stands. 

He stands — the while his genius unbereft 
Is calm — one string and Paganini left. 

He plays. The one string's daring notes uprise 
Against that storm as if they sought the skies. 



362 NOTES 

A silence falls; then awe; the people bow, 
And they who first had hissed are weeping now. 

And when the last note, trembling, died away, 
Some shouted ' Bravo! ' some had leaned to pray." 

— By the Rev. Charles L. Thompson, in the 
Independent, about 1882. 

160 : 22. " trainers." See Cent. Diet. Cf. the word 
"train-band," as in Cowper's "John Gilpin." The term 
"trainer " (militiaman), as formerly used in the United States, 
came doubtless from the English train-band. 

160 : 25. Vergil's advice. Georgics, Book IV. 

161 : 10. Mexican. The Mexican War, 1846-1847, was 
much in the mind of Thoreau during his stay at Walden. 

161 : 25. know beans. What is the American colloquial- 
ism on which Thoreau is here punning? 

162 : 6. cranes. An allusion to the annual warfare be- 
tween the pygmies and the cranes. See Class. Diet. 

162 : 12. Dust. Why should Hector be said to roll in 
the dust? 

162 : 18. Pythagorean. Pythagoras (c. 582-500 b.c), 
Greek philosopher and mathematician. He advocated absti- 
nence from beans. 

162 : 27. Evelyn. See note on p. 339. 

162 : 28. laetation. Manure; more properly, manuring. 
See Murray's New English Dictionary. 

162 : 29. repastination. From Latin repastinare, to dig 
up again. A second digging. 

163 : 5. Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665), courtier, soldier, 
and scientist. In his Discourses Concerning the Vegetation 
of Plants (1660) he was " the first to notice the importance 
of vital air or oxygen to plants." 



NOTES 363 

166 : 5. Ceres. The goddess of grain and harvest. 

166 : 6. Plutus (Pluto). Plutus was the Greek personi- 
fication of riches; Pluto, the god of the underworld. 

166 : 11. Cato. See note on p. 351. 

166 : 13. Varro, Marcus Tarentius (116-27 B.C.), a learned 
Roman scholar, author of seventy-four books. 

166 : 20. rays alike. Cf. Matthew v., 45. 

166 : 33. spe. A doubtful derivation. See Diet. 

167 : 2. from gerendo. Another questionable derivation. 
See Diet. 

167 : 4. granary. From Latin granum, grain. How do 
you pronounce this word? 

168 : 6. to the village. Inattention to sentences like this 
has given rise to much misapprehension as to Thoreau's mode 
of life at Walden. He was not a hermit in the ordinary 
sense of the word; he had no intention of interrupting rela- 
tionship with his fellows. 

168 : 22. Redding & Company's. See note on p. 354. 

169 : 3. Etesian. Greek and Roman authors thus termed 
the annual summer winds that blew across the Mediterra- 
nean from the north. 

169 : 12. caryatides. In architecture, figures of women 
serving as columns. See Cent. Diet, for account of possible 
origin of the term. 

170 : 9. Orpheus. The skilful musician showed his 
power on the Argonautic expedition. See Seyffert, p. 438. 

170 : 29. "as I sailed." From the anonymous song 
Captain Kidd, beginning: — 

" You captains bold and brave, hear our cries, hear our 
cries." 

The line, 

" My name was Robert Kidd, when I sailed, when I sailed," 



364 NOTES 

is the best known. The song is found in many collections 
of songs, for example, in Our Familiar Songs (Henry Holt 
and Co., 1881). Captain William Kidd (for "Robert" is 
an error) was one of the most picturesque of pirates, and 
the gross unfairness of the trial which resulted in his execu- 
tion has served to extenuate his faults. The search for his 
treasure along the New York and New England coasts has 
now pretty much ceased. For a brief account of Kidd's 
life, see Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography. An 
interesting literary utilization of the Kidd treasure motive 
may be seen in Poe's Gold Bug. 

173:3. run "amok." From a Malay adjective, amoq, 
" rusliing in frenzy to the commission of indiscriminate 
murder " (Marsden). The word was introduced into Eng- 
lish through traders to the Eastern Archipelago. Usually 
spelled "amuck." 

175 : 26. Coenebites. Members of religious orders living 
in convents or communities. Contrast hermit, anchorite. 

178 : 3. sixty-one and a half acres. Note the surveyor's 
exactness. On a map of Concord published in 1852 by H. F. 
Walling is printed, " White Pond and Walden Pond are 
laid down from surveys by H. D. Thoreau, Civ. Engr.," 
and the areas are given as, respectively, " 40 acres " and 
" 64y^^ acres." Edward Jarvis, whose interesting MS., 
Houses and People in Concord, is in the Concord Public 
Library, says of Thoreau, " He was also a land surveyor, 
and his work in this field was very accurate and commanded 
public confidence, and bears the test of the surveys of his 
successors." 

179 : 16. cerulean. Sky-colored. 

179 : 19. vitreous. Like glass. 

180 : 2. Michael Angelo. See Ency. Brit. Examine 
photographs or half-tones of Michael Angelo's paintings and 
sculptures with this passage in mind. 



NOTES 365 

181 : 21. pellucid. Transparent, clear. 

182 : 1. Castalian Fountain. A spring on Mount Par- 
nassus, sacred to Apollo and the Muses. It was believed to 
be capable of conferring poetic inspiration. 

182 : 2. Golden Age. In mythological history, the reign 
of Saturn; a time of patriarchal simplicity, when the earth 
produced food spontaneously, and when men were innocent 
and peaceable. See Bulfinch, p. 23. 

183 : 21. the latter. Examine the construction of this 
sentence. What is the grammatical subject of "sympathize" ? 

184 : 3. shore is shorn. Shore and shear are probably 
from the same word. See Diet. 

185 : 9. Saffron Walden. In Essex, northeast of London, 

186 : 28. reticulatus. " Like a net," with reference to 
arrangement of markings. 

186 : 28. guttatus. Marked by drops; spotted. 

188 : 18. fluviatile. Pertaining to rivers. See Diet, for 
the etymology. 

194 : 28. Trojan horse. The wooden horse by means of 
which the Greeks entered Troy. See Bulfinch, p. 287. 

194 : 31. Moore of Moore Hall. (Usually spelled " More 
of More Hall.") 

" More of More Hall 
With nothing at all 
He slew the Dragon of Wantley." 

From The Dragon of Wantley, a burlesque ballad printed in 
Percy's Reliques. It satirizes ballad conventions and ex- 
cesses much as the Sir Thopas of Chaucer does those of the 
Metrical Romances. 

194 : 31. Deep Cut. A railway cut near Walden Pond. 

197 : 16. curious balls. " It seems plain that the balls 
are simply an incidental mechanical result of the rolling 



3G6 NOTES 

about of light water-logged materials on sandy bottoms by 
the under-water parts of waves, aided perhaps as to their 
cohesion by the development of glutinous microorganisms." 
— W. F. Ganong in Rhodora, March, 1905. Thoreau de- 
posited the balls he found, with his collection of arrow-heads, 
at the Boston Museum of Natural History. The arrow- 
heads have since his death been removed to the Peabody 
Museum in Cambridge, but the balls are not with them; 
probably when dry they fell to pieces. 

198 : 4. harpy-like. The harpies were winged monsters, 
half women, half birds of prey. See Bulfinch, p. 320. 

198 : 22. privilege. The right to use the water-power of 
a stream. 

199 : 12. brave attempt resounds. From William Drum- 
mond of Hawthornden (1585-1649); Sonnet, Icarus. The 
sonnets of Drummond are celebrated for their elevation of 
sentiment and grace of expression. Bed^onson visited him 
at " classic Hawthornden," one of the prettiest glens in 
Scotland, in 1618. See Conversations with Ben Jonson, 
Drummond's notes on Jonson. 

199 : 18. water privileges. See note on privilege above. 

201 : 33. Kohinoor. A large diamond belonging to the 
British crown, acquired by Queen Victoria in 1850. 

203 : 4. Druids. Priests of the ancient Celts. See Bul- 
finch, p. 445. 

203 : 7. Valhalla. The hall of Odin, to which, in Scandi- 
navian mythology, go all heroes who fall in battle. See 
Bulfinch, p. 413. 

204 :28. Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), Italian sculptor 
and goldsmith. His marvellous Memoirs are written in a 
very vivacious and interesting fashion. See Ch. XXVI for 
the account of the common phenomenon of the shadow 
aureole mentioned by Thoreau. 



NOTES 367 

205 : 14. has since sung. Ellery Channing, in his poem 
" Baker Farm." 

205 : 18. musquash. Muskrat. 

209 : 31. Remember. See Ecclesiastes xii., 1. 

210 : 14. Landscape where. This quotation is from 
" Baker Farm " cited above. 

211 : 17. talaria. Wings. See Cent. Diet. 

214 : 12. omit the gun. Cf. Emerson's beautiful " For- 
bearance " — 

" Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? 
Loved the wood-rose and left it on its stalk? " 

214 : 23. Chaucer's nun. Not the nun, but the monk. 
See Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 11. 177, 178. Tho- 
reau says in his Journal (Vol. I, p. 303) : " I admire Chaucer 
for a sturdy English wit. The easy height he speaks from 
in his Prologue to Jfhe Canterbury Tales is as good as any- 
thing in it, — as if he were indeed better than any of the 
company there assembled. . . , Great delicacy and 
gentleness of character is constantly displayed in Chaucer's 
verse. The whole story of Chanticleer and Dame Partlet in 
The Nun's Priest's Tale is genuine humanity. I know of 
nothing better in its kind." 

214 : 28. Algonquins. A group of tribes of North Ameri- 
can Indians, formerly in possession of a district north of the 
St. Lawrence River. 

215 : 6. philanthropic. What is the derivation? 
217 : 12. animal food. See note on p. 339. 

217 : 14. Kirby and Spence. William Kirby and William 
Spence, authors oi An Introduction to Entomology or Elements 
of the Natural History of Insects. The work is still consid- 
ered valuable by scientists. 

318 : 21, came. Have come. Why? 



368 NOTES 

219 : 25. ebriosity. -» Habitual drunkenness. 

220 : 5. Ved (or Veda). The sacred scriptures of the 
ancient Hindus, written in Sanskrit. 

220 : 10. Vedant (or Vedanta). A Hindu system of 
philosophy founded on the Veda. 

220 : 25. defileth a man. See Matthew xv,, 11. 

221 : 31. Mencius (fourth century, b.c). Great Chinese 
philosopher; expounder of Confucianism. 

222 : 23. How happy's. From John Donne's '' To Sir 
Edward Herbert, since Lord Herbert of Cherbury." See 
Anderson's Complete British Poets, Vol, IV, p. 97, or 
The Poems of John Donne, Muses' Library ed., Vol, II, 
p. 20. 

222 : 24. disafforested. To disafforest is to free from the 
restrictions of forest laws, to change to common land. 
222 : 27. herd of swine. See Mark v., 1-14. 

224 : 27. moiling. To moil is to soil one's self with severe 
physical labor; hence, to toil, to be subjected to drudgery. 

225 : 14. Bose. Formerly common in New England as a 
name for a dog. From Bowser? Bow-wow? 

226 : 1. Poet. William Ellery Channing (1818-1901), 
nephew of the great divine and an intimate friend of Tho- 
reau. He was author of Thoreau: Poet- Naturalist, an in- 
valuable quarry for Thoreau material. 

227 : 6. Con-fut-see. Confucius. See note on p. 339. 
227 : 15, skewer. Barb. 

227 : 22. Pilpay & Co., i.e. Pilpay (or Bidpai) and other 
writers of fables. Bidpai is not a proper name but the title 
formerly applied to the chief scholar in an Indian court. 
The Fables are from the fourth century b.c. La Fontaine 
drew eighteen of his fables from this source. 

230 : 5, Brister's Hill. A rather low hill on the left of 
the road as one approaches the Pond from Concord. For a, 



NOTES 369 

picture of Brister's Spring, see Manuscript Edition of Tho- 
reau's works. 

231 : 9. myrmidons. The faithful followers of Achilles 
in the Trojan War. 

232 : 3. had charged him. An allusion to the Grecian 
mother who charged her son to return either with his shield 
(a victor) or upon it. 

232 : 6. Patroclus. Friend of Achilles in Homer's Iliad. 

232 : 26. Austerlitz or Dresden. By his great victory over 
Austria and Russia at Austerlitz (December 2, 1805) Napo- 
leon brought about the Peace of Presburg. The Battle of 
Dresden (August 26, 1813) was Napoleon's last great vic- 
tory on German soil. 

232 : 28. Luther Blanchard. A fifer in the Acton com- 
pany at the Battle of Concord. 

232 : 29. Buttrick, Major, gave the order to fire. 

232 : 30. Davis and Hosmer. Isaac Davis, the Acton 
captain, and Abner Hosmer were killed. 

233 : 27. Hotel des Invalides, an asylum in Paris for in- 
firm and disabled soldiers, founded in 1670. Best known as 
the burial place of Napoleon. 

234 : 1. Kirby and Spence. See note on p. 367. 

234 : 3. Ruber, Francois (1750-1831). " A Swiss natu- 
ralist, best known for his observations on the honey-bee." 

234 : 9. Eugenius the Fourth. Was Pope 1431-1447. 

234 : 12. Olaus Magnus (or Magni) (1490-1558). Eccle- 
siastic and diplomat. Leaving Sweden because of the suc- 
cess of the Reformation, he went to Rome, where he became 
titular archbishop of Upsala. He wrote Historia de Genti- 
bus Septentrialibus, a book still valuable for the light it 
sheds on Scandinavian customs and folk-lore. See Ency. 
Brit. 

234 : 17. Christiern the Second, often called Christian the 



370 • NOTES 

Cruel (1481-1559). He was expelled from Sweden by 
Gustavus Vasa. 

234 : 18. Polk, James K. Was President of the United 
States, 1845-1849. 

234 : 20. Fugitive-Slave Bill. The Fugitive-Slave Bill, 
supported by Daniel Webster, much to the annoyance and 
disgust of the Abolitionists, became a law as a part of Henry 
Clay's " Compromise Bill " in 1850. 

234 : 21. village Bose. See note on p. 368. 

234 : 31. jerbilla. Perhaps jerboa. But see gerhillus in 
Diet. 

236 : 2. Mill-dam. See note on p. 353. 

239 : 10. bayous. From American Indian bayuk, an 
inlet from a gulf or river, A word used chiefly in the South- 
ern States. 

241 : 23. totem. Tribes and families of American In- 
dians assumed natural objects, often animals, as distin- 
guishing marks or symbols. Representations of these were 
tattooed on the body, worked into garments, or carved on 
poles. 

243 : 28. poet. See note on p. 368. 

245 : 4. Cato. See note on p. 351. 

245 : 10. firkin. In England, a measure of capacity 
equal to one-fourth of a barrel, or nine imperial gallons. In 
the United States, the word usually means a small cask or 
wooden vessel. 

245 : 18. purlins. Horizontal timbers supported by the 
principal rafters and supporting the common rafters. 

245 : 21 . king and queen posts. The king-post is a middle 
post supporting the apex of a pair of rafters; it rests upon the 
tie-beam. When the support of the rafters is maintained 
by two posts they are termed queen-posts. 

245 : 22. prostrate Saturn. Saturn, confused with Cro- 



NOTES 371 

nus, is sometimes spoken of as if he were one of the Titans 
overthrown by Zeus. 

246 : 33. parlaver (or palaver). " Flattery, adulation; 
talk intended to deceive." This word is a good example of 
degeneration in the meaning of words. See Diet, for older 
meanings. As instances of degeneration, study: villain, 
knave, caitiff, fellow, cunning. 

247 : 2. tropes. Figures of speech. 

248:9. unio fluviatilis. River mussel; fresh-water clam. 

248 : 27. caddis worms. The larvae of caddis-flies. 

251 : 17. Vulcan. In Roman mythology, the god of fire. 

251 : 18. Terminus. In Roman mythology, the god of 
boundaries. 

252 : 8. Gilpin, William (1724-1804). He wrote exten- 
sively on the natural scenery of England. 

252 : 16. vert. In English forest law, anything bearing a 
green leaf that may serve as a covert for deer. 

253 : 3. Michaux, Andre (1746-1802). A French botanist 
and traveller. He visited America, and wrote on its flora. 

253 : 17. New Hollander. See note on p. 340. 

253 : 18. Robinhood or Robin Hood. The Sherwood 
Forest outlaw; said to have lived in the twelfth century. 
See Child's English and Scottish Ballads for the superb 
ballad literature on him. 

253 : 19. Goody Blake and Harry Gill. Characters in a 
notoriously poor piece of verse by Wordsworth (p. 79 of 
Globe ed. of Wordsworth's Poetical Works). 

254 : 25. Light-winged Smoke. This poem had been 
printed in the Dial, the organ of the Transcendentalists, in 
April, 1843, where it was signed " T." It is the only part of 
Walden printed before 1854. 

259 : 22. Zilpha. This is the Zilpah of Jar vis's manu- 
script. 



372 NOTJES 

260 : 1. Brister Freeman (or Bristol Freeman, according to 
Jarvis). He was " a passionate man and quarreled with 
boys " (Jarvis.) For an account of Brister's fight with a 
bull see Sanborn's Henry D. Thoreaw, p. 206. 

260 : 23. Breed's location. Jarvis speaks of " John C. 
Breed, barber and drunkard; found dead in the road at 
last, in 1824." He was " an extreme instance of the power 
of appetite for rum . . . was its complete slave. He was 
all absorbed in it; he had no other want, no other affection. 
If he had opportunity to earn six cents by shaving, he would 
spend one cent for a cracker and five cents for his rum." 

261 : 11. Davenant's Gondibert. " Gondibert," a long and 
tedious poem in heroic stanzas by Sir William Davenant, 
published in 1653. 

261:17. Chalmers's collection. Chalmers's English Poets, 
a huge collection of the work of poets from Chaucer to 
Cowper. Many of the biographical sketches are those of 
Dr. Johnson, but others are by Alexander Chalmers (Lon- 
don, 1810). 

261 : 18. Nervii. Conquered by Caesar in Gaul. 

264:6. coil. Pun on "Q." For a more complete account 
of Quoil, see Journal, Vol. I., p. 415. 

264 : 10. St. Helena. A small island in the South Atlan- 
tic, eight hundred miles from the nearest land. Napoleon 
spent from 1815 to 1821 at Longwood. 

264 : 23. broken at the fountain. See Ecclesiastes xii., 6. 

264 : 30. Reynard. The hero of the beast-epic; a com- 
mon name for " fox." 

265 : 22. absolute. From Milton's Paradise Lost, II., 
1. 559. 

266 : 12. water privileges. See note on p. 366. 
266 : 19. like the rose. See Isaiah xxxv., 1. 
269 : 4. the other also. See Matthew v., 39. 



NOTES 373 

269:27. ''crack." A "cozy, comfortable chat." See 
Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary. 

270 : 5. was a poet. See note on p. 368. 

270 : 22. welcome visitor. Amos Bronson Alcott. See 
note on p. 345. 

271 : 8. Old Mortality. Robert Paterson passed his life 
in restoring the gravestones of the Covenanters. See Scott's 
Old Mortality. 

271 : 23. ingenuus. Latin, " free-born, born of free 
parents;" hence, " characterized by the traits of a freeman, 
candid, ingenuous." 

272 : 23. Vishnu Purana. The best-known of the eigh- 
teen Sanskrit Puranas. It is illuminating in the study of the 
later phases of Brahmanism. 

275 : 19. vulpine. From Latin vulpes, fox. 

281 : 19. Sam Nutting was a locally famous character. 
Often spoken of as " Fox Nutting " and " Old Fox." 

281 : 24. *' Wast Book " (or Waste Book). In bookkeep- 
ing now called " Day-book." In his Journal, January 27, 
1854, Thoreau writes: " I have an old account-book, found 
in Deacon R. Brown's garret since his death. The first 
leaf or two is gone. Its cover is brown paper, on which, 
amid many marks and scribblings, I find written 

*' ' Mr. Ephraim Jones 

His Wast Book 

Anno Domini 

1742'" 

283 : 14. scud. Scudded. 

286:21. fear-naughts, or dread-naughts, were thick 
coats. 

288 : 3. Waldenses or Waldensians, a body of Christians 
of Reformation principles, severely persecuted in the 



374 NOTES 

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See Milton's sonnet 
On the Massacre at Piedmont. 

288 : 31. " fifty-six." A weight of fifty-six pounds, half 
a " hundredweight." 

289 : 29. Gilpin. See note on p. 371. 

290 : 6. So high. See Paradise Lost, VII., 1. 288. 

290 :21. have been necessary. Examine the syntax of 
this sentence. 

294:27. "leach hole." Used figuratively, from the 
opening at the bottom of a " leach-tub," a vat for wood- 
ashes used in making " lye." 

296:21. Hyperborean. Pertaining to the far north, 
wintry. See Diet. 

296 : 26. New England Farmer or Cultivator. The New 
England Farmer and Gardener's Journal, was founded in 
1821, and was extensively circulated. For Cultivator, 
see note on p. 351. 

297 : 20. Tartarus. Here used as synonymous with the 
lower world, Hades. 

297 : 28. Cambridge. Fifteen miles east of Walden Pond 
on the Fitch burg Railroad. 

298 : 16. Valhalla. See note on p. 366. 

298 : 21. estiva te. Pass the summer. 

299 : 19. Fresh Pond. A pond near Cambridge. Still 
used as an ice-pond. 

299 : 29. parable of the sower. Matthew xiii., 3.-8. 

300 : 9. Madras and Bombay and Calcutta. See map of 
India. 

300 : 11. Bhagvat Geeta. See note on p. 347. 

300 :,18. Brahma and Vishnu and Indra. For Indra, see 
note on p. 357. Brahma and Vishnu assume their greatest 
importance only in later Hinduism. See Cent. Diet. 

300:25-26. Atlantis and Hesperides. " Atlantis, a myth- 



NOTES 375 

ical island in the Atlantic Ocean, northwest of Africa, re- 
ferred to by Plato and the ancient writers, which with its 
inhabitants was said to have disappeared in a convulsion of 
nature." The Hesperides, in the Far West, guarded the 
golden apples which Earth caused to grow as a marriage- 
gift for Hera. See Class. Diet. — periplus. Circumnavi- 
gation; a voyage around a sea or around a land. For 
Hanno, see note, p. 341. 

300 : 27. TernateandTidore. See Paradise Lost, II., 1. 639. 
In the Journal, Vol. I. p. 183, Thoreau quotes the passage 
at length. Thoreau is not overcareful in his geography. 
See map of the Moluccas for the islands Ternate and Tidore. 

304 : 8. papillae. Sensitive protuberances. 

305 : 22. Methuselah. The oldest man in the Bible; 
nine hundred and sixty-nine years old. See Genesis v., 27. 

307 : 16. laciniated. Adorned with fringes. — imbricated 
thalluses. Bent and hollowed masses of cellular tissue. 
For several paragraphs Thoreau indulges his love of fan- 
tastic pseudo-science. Note the fanciful etymologies on p. 
308. 

310:23. Champollion, Jean Frangois (1791-1832). "A 
celebrated French Orientalist, the discoverer of the key to 
the Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions." 

310 : 30. bowels. In the older physiology the bowels 
were regarded as the seat of pity, kindness, etc. Cf. " bow- 
els of mercy," See Colossians iii., 12; Luke i., 78, marginal 
reading. 

311 : 24. Thor. In Scandinavian mythology, the second 
principal god. God of thunder. Cf. " Thursday " (Thor's 
day). 

312 : 4. decent. Fitting, suitable. 
314 : 4. leuciscus. Dace. 

314 ; 6. alive again. Revelation ii., 8, 



376 NOTES 

314 : 26. Turdus migratorius or merula migratoria. The 
robin. 

316 : 6. Eurus ad Auroram. Ovid's Metamorphoses, I., 
1. 61, et seq. 

318 : 1. The Golden Age, etc. See Ovid's Metamorphoses, 
I., 1. 89, et seq. 

318 : 24. Merlin. In English falconry, the sparrow- 
hawk, a small but spirited bird of prey. 

319 : 11. cupreous. Copper-colored. 

319 : 19. O Death, etc. See 1 Corinthians xv., 55. 

320 : 1. Titanic. Huge, like the Titans, the giants who 
were overcome by Zeus. 

321 : 10. Calidas' drama of Sacontala. Sakontala, or 
The Lost Ring, by Kalidasa, is an ancient and interesting 
Sanskrit play. 

322 : 14. Tierra del Fuego, or " Land of Fire." So called 
by Magellan, the discoverer, in 1520, perhaps because of 
Indian fires sighted on the coast. 

322 : 17. tafferel. Now usually spelled taffrail, the upper 
part of the stern of a vessel. Our spelling furnishes an 
illustration of folk-etymology. Cf. reddish for radish, 
sparrow-grass for asparagus, Welsh rarebit for Welsh rabbit, 
etc. 

322 : 19. picking oakum. A task to which sailors, when 
not otherwise employed, are often assigned : frequently the 
tedious work of incompetent seamen. See Ch. III. of Dana's 
Two Years before the Mast. 

323 : 13. Franklin, Sir John (1786-1847), was the first 
explorer to discover the Northwest Passage. He died of 
starvation in King William's Land in 1847. Between 1848 
and 1854, before certain news of his death arrived, fifteen 
expeditions were sent out in search of him. 

323 : 14. Mr. Grinnell, Henry (1800-1874). In 1850 he 



NOTES 377 

fitted out an expedition to search for Franklin (supra). 
GrinnelFs Land is named for him. He returned eventually. 
323 : 16. Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clark and Frobisher. 
See Biog. Diet. Park's explorations lay in Africa; Meri- 
wether Lewis and William Clark made an expedition to 
the mouth of the Columbia River in 1804-1806; Sir Martin 
Frobisher discovered " Frobisher Bay." 

323 : 30. Expedition. Sir James Ross's expedition, which 
sailed from England in 1839 and returned in 1843. Victoria 
Land was discovered and many important observations 
made. 

324 : 12. Zanzibar. An island off the coast of German 
East Africa. 

324 : 13. " Symmes' Hole." John Cleves Symmes (1780- 
1829), a soldier in the War of 1812, devoted much of the 
latter part of his life to eccentric philosophical speculation. 
He put forth the theory that the earth is composed of hollow 
concentric spheres, with apertures at the poles for the ad- 
mission of light. Congress refusing to appropriate a sum 
for the equipment of an expedition to the North Pole to 
demonstrate the truth of his theory, Symmes published in 
1826 his Theory of Concentric Spheres. " Symmes' Hole " 
became a popular byword for the alleged opening at the 
North Pole. See Atlantic Monthly for April, 1873. 

324:15. Gold Coast and Slave Coast. Gold Coast, a 
British crown colony on the Gulf of Guinea, West Africa. 
Slave Coast, the region just east of the Gold Coast, on the 
Bight of Benim. 

324:21. Sphinx. In Greek mythology, when (Edipus 
correctly answered the riddle of the Sphinx, she threw her- 
self upon a rock and died. See Class. Diet. Thoreau in his 
Journal gives an elaborate interpretation of Emerson's 
poem, The Sphinx {Journal, Vol. I. p. 229). 



378 NOTES 

324 : 31. Mirabeau, Gabriel Riquetti (1749-1791). One 
of the most remarkable and significant figures of the period 
of the French Revolution; certainly the greatest French 
orator of his day. 

326 : 26. extra- vagant. Look up the derivation. 

327 : 12. translated. What is the derivation? Note 
Thoreau's fondness for the use of words in their earlier or 
more literal senses. 

327 : 24. Kabir. A great Hindu religious reformer in 
the fifteenth century. He endeavored to construct a body 
of religious doctrine that would unite the Hindus and the 
Mussulmans. 

328 : 9. a living dog. See Ecclesiastes ix., 4. 

331 : 15. Croesus became King of Lydia in 560 b.c. He 
was famous in antiquity for his wealth, and his name has 
passed into proverb. 

332 : 24. kittlybenders, or kettle-de-benders. The sport 
of running or skating on thin, bending ice. See Cent. Diet. 
Edward Jarvis testifies that the game was common in the 
older Concord. 

333 : 24. conducted (himself), behaved. 

334 : 18. pellicle. Thin skin or film, from Latin pellis, 
skin. 

336 : 9. John or Jonathan. Cf. note on p. 344. 



INDEX 



Abelard, Peter, 354. 

Absolute, 372. 

Acheron, 358. 

Achilles, 359, 369. 

Acton, 355. 

Adam Bede, 347. 

Adam Bell, 354. 

Adelaide, Princess, 346. 

Admetus, 348. 

jEolian music, 356. 

^olus, 356. 

^schylus, 353. 

^sculapius, 358. 

^sop's Fables, 348. 

Affectation of stoicism, 346. 

Age, 339. 

Aglaia, 342. 

Agri-culture, 345. 

Alcott, Amos Bronson, 345. 

Alcott, Louisa May, 345, 360. 

Aldermanic, 356. 

Alexander, 353. 

Algonquins, 367. 

Alive again, 375. 

All mortar, 348. 

Amenophis, 352. 

Ammiral, 355. 

Amok (amuck), 364. 

And it be, 344. 

.And the, 344. 

Animal food, 367. 

Antaeus, 360. 

Apollo, 353, 358, 365. 

Arbuthnot, Dr., 344. 



Arcadia, 347. 

Argonautic expedition, 363. 

Arrow-heads, 360. 

"As I sailed," 363. 

As You Like It, 354. 

Astor House, 358. 

Asurbanipal, 344. 

Atlantis, 374. 

Atlas, 351. 

Atropos, 342, 354. 

Augean, 338. 

Aurora, 344. 

Austen, Jane, 342. 

Austerlitz, 369. 

Australia, 340. 

Autumn, 340. * 

Avesta, 353. 

Back plastering, 343. 
"Baker Farm," 367. 
Balls, curious, 365. 
Bar, 356. 

Bartram, William, 348. 
Bayous, 370. 
Beacon Hill, 357. 
Beacon Street, 355. 
Beans, 362. 
Beauty of life, 346. 
Bedford, 355. 
Bell, setting the, 352. 
Bell-wether, 355. 
Ben Jonsonian, 356. 
Best contentment has, 359. 
Bhagvat-Geeta, 347. 
379 



380 



INDEX 



Bidpai, 368. 

Biennials, 340. 

Blake, Goody, 371. 

Blanchard, Luther, 369. 

Boat, 351. 

Bombay, 354, 374. 

Bose, 368. 

"Boston and Albany," 352. 

Boston Museum of Natural 

History, 366. 
Boston Pier, 355. 
Boston Society of Natural 

History, 361. 
Bottoms, 341. 
Bowels, 375. 
Brahma, 374. 
Bramins, 337. 
Brave attempt, 366. 
Breed, John C, 372. 
Breed's location, 372. 
Brighton, 357. 
Brister's Hill, 368. 
Broadway, 345. 
Broken at the fountain, 372. 
Brook Farm, 349, 357. 
Brothers of mine, 346. 
Brown, Deacon R., 373. 
Buena Vista, 355. 
Bunyan, 338. 
Burroughs, 342. 
But I, 341. 
Buttrick, Major, 369. 
By gosh, 359. 

Caddis worms, 371. 
Calcutta, 374. 
Calidas, 376. 
Cambridge, 374. 
Cambridge College, 346. 
Came, 367. 
Canadian, 359. 



Captain Kidd, 363. 

Carew, Thomas, 350. 

Carlyle, 341. 

Carry it on, 351. 

Caryatides, 363. 

Cashiered, 341. 

Castalian Fountain, 365. 

Cato, 351, 363. 

Cellini, Benvenuto, 366. 

Cerberus, 359. 

Cereaha, 348. 

Cerealian, 348. 

Ceres, 348, 363. 

Cerulean, 364. 

Chalmers's collection, 372. 

Champollion, J. F., 375. 

Channing, Ellery, 347, 357, 367, 

368. 
Chanticleer, 356. 
Chapman, George, 343. 
Charles I, 352. 
Chaucer, 356, 365. 
Chaucer's nun, 367. 
Chief end, 338. 
Chips, 348. 

Cholmondeley, Thomas, 360. 
Christiern the Second, 369. 
Cimeter, 353. 
Circe, 353. 
Civil War, 352. 
Clarence, Duke of, 346. 
Clark, William, 377. 
Clav, Henry, 370. 
Clock, 354. 
Clothing, 341. 
Clotho, 342. 

Caelum, Brittanicum, 350. 
Coenebites, 364. 
Coil, 372. 

Coleman, Mr., 361. 
Coleridge, 351. 



INDEX 



381 



Colman, Rev. Henry, 361. 
Columbia River, 377. 
Conunitted, 360. 
Community, 360. 
Complemental Verses, 350. 
"Compromise Bill," 370. 
Concord, 337, 338, 356, 378. 
Concord, Battle of, 369. 
Concord school, 337. 
Concord School of Philosophy, 

345. 
Conducted, 378. 
Confucianism, 368. 
Confucius, 339. 
Con-fut-see (Confucius), 368. 
Cortex, 342. 

Cowper, William, 351, 362. 
Crabbed Age and Youth, 339. 
"Crack," 373. 
Cranes, 362. 
Croesus, 378. 
"Cultivator," 351. 
Cupreous, 376. 
Curious balls, 365. 
Curtis,|^George William, 345. 

Darwin, 340. 

Davenant, Sir William, 372. 

Davis, Isaac, 369. 

Dead Sea, 358. 

Death, 376. 

Decent, 375. 

Deep cut, 365. 

Defileth a man, 368. 

Deliquium, 353. 

Delphi, 353. 

De Quincey, 338, 358. 

Deucalion, 338. 

Dial, The, 371. 

Digby, Sir Kenelm, 362. 

Dijlah, 350. 



Disafiforested, 368. 

Dobbin, 361. 

Dobbs, 361. 

Dobson, 361. 

Dodona, 353. 

Dog, living, 378. 

Domestic, 342. 

Donne, John, 368. 

Dragon of Wantley, The , 365. 

Dread-naughts, 373. 

Dresden, 369. 

Drill-barrow, 354. 

Druids, 366.. 

Drummond, William, 366. 

Dry wood, 338. 

Duke of Clarence, 346. 

Dun fish, 355. 

Dust, 362. 

Dust upon their heads, 361. 

Early Spring in Massachusetts, 

340. 
Earth, theory of the, 377. 
Ebriosity, 368. 
Eclat, 343. 
Effete, 360. 
Egotism, 337. 
Egypt, 342. 
Egyptian wheat, 342. 
Ei7ie Frauenfahrt um die Welt, 

341. 
Elysian, 340. 
Emancipation Bill, 338. 
Emerson, 337, 338, 367, 377. 
Emma, 342. 
Empire, German, 352. 
English Mail Coach, The, 339. 
Epistle from Eloise, 354. 
"Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," 

344. 
Esculents. 340. 



382 



INDEX 



Esoteric, 353. 

Estivate, 374. 

Etesian, 363. 

Eugenius the Fourth, 369. 

Euphrosyne, 342. 

Eurus ad Auroram, 376. 

Evelyn, 339, 362. 

Every morning, 351. 

Evil, 348. 

Excursion, 352. 

Expedition, 377. 

Extravagant, 378. 

Exuviffi, 348. 

Factitious, 338, 345. 
Fates, 342. 
Fear-naughts, 373. 
"Fifty-six," 374. 
Firkin, 370. 

Fitchburg Railroad, 344. 
Five Points, 357. 
Flocks of Admetus, 348. 
Flute, 360. 
Fluviatile, 365. 
Flying Childers, 346. 
"Forbearance," 367. 
Form, 353. 
For these, 337. 
Fourth of July, 337, 345. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 356. 
Franklin, Sir John, 376. 
Freeman, Brister, 372. 
Fresh Pond, 374. 
Frobisher, Sir Martin, 377. 
From gerendo, 363. 
Fruitlands, 349. 
Fry, Mrs., 350. 
Fugitive-Slave Bill, 370. 

Ganong, W. F., 366. 
Gauging, 341. 



Gazettes, 342. 

Gerendo, 363. 

German Confederacy, 352. 

Gill, Harry, 371. 

Gilpin, William, 371. 

Glory of Motion, The, 339. 

Glow-shoes, 344. 

Goffe, William, 357. 

Gold coast, 377. 

Golden Age, 365, 376. 

Goloeshoes, 344. 

Gondibert, 372. 

Goodfellow, Robin, 349. 

Good News from New England, 

359. 
Goody Blake and Harry Gill, 

371. 
Gookin, Daniel, 343. 
Gosh, 359. 

Governor Winthrop, 345. 
Graces, 342. 
Granary, 363. 
Gray's Elegy, 356. 
Great ammiral, 355. 
Grecian mother, 369. 
Green, 338. 
Grinnell, Henry, 376. 
Grinnell's Land, 377. 
Grossest of groceries, 339, 348. 
Guttatus, 365. 

Had charged him, 369. 
Had communication, 360. 
Hair springe, 343. 
Hanno, 341. 
Harivansa, 351. 
Harpy-like, 366. 
Harvard College, 346. 
Has since sung, 367. 
Hawthorne, 351. 
Hawthornden, 366. 



INDEX 



383 



Have been necessary, 374. 

Healthy, wealthy, and wise, 356. 

Hebe, 358. 

Hector, 362. 

Heimskringla, 342. 

Hercules, 337. 

Herd of swine, 368. 

Herodotus, 353. 

Hesperides, 374. 

Higginson, Col. T. W., 339. 

Hippocrates, 339. 

Historical Collections, 343. 

HoUis Hall, 346. 

Hollo well place, 351. 

Homer, 353. 

Horse, Trojan, 365. 

Hosmer, Abner, 369. 

Hotel des Invahdes, 369. 

Houses and People in Concord, 

364. 
How happy's, 368. 
Howard, John, 349, 350. 
Huber, Frangois, 369. 
Hygeia, 358. 
Hyperborean, 374. 

I am monarch, 351. 
Idealism, 340. 
Imbricated thalluses, 375. 
Inde genus, 338. 
Indian philosophy, 360. 
Indian studies, 347. 
Indians (Algonquin), 367. 
Indians, American, 342, 349, 

370. 
Indra, 357. 
Ingenuus, 373. 
Institute, 346. 
Introduction to Entomology, An, 

367. 
lolas (lolaus), 337. 



Iron horse, 354. 
Its, 343. 

Jail, 338. 

Jarvis, Edward, 364. 

Jerbilla, 370. 

Jesuits, 349. 

John Bull, 344. 

"John Gilpin," 362. 

Johnson, Dr., 372. 

Jonathan, 344. 

Jones, Mr. Ephraim, 373. 

Jonson, Ben, 356, 366. 

Kabir, 378. 
Kalidasa, 376. 
Kettle-de-benders, 378. 
King and queen posts, 370. 
King Richard III, 345. 
Kirby and Spence, 367. 
Kittlybenders, 378. 
Know beans, 362. 
Kohinoor, 366. 

La Fontaine, 368. 
La Pe rouse, 341. 
Lachesis, 342. 
Laciniated, 375. 
Laertius, 360. 
Laetation, 362. 
Laing, 342. 
Landscape where, 367. 
Larvae, 371. 

Last improvement, 344. 
Law of gravitation, 350. 
"Leach hole," 374. 
Leuciscus, 375. 
Lewis, Meriwether, 377. 
Liebig, 340. 

Light-winged smoke, 371. 
Like the rose, 372. 



384 



INDEX 



Lincoln, 355. 
Living dog, 378. 
Long Wharf, 355. 
Longwood, 372. 
Lost Ring, The, 376. 
Lowell Institute, 346. 
Lowell (J. R.), 359. 
Lowell, John, 346. 
Loyola, 349. 
Lucky fox, 348. 

Madras, 374. 

Magellan, 376. 

Mahabharata, 347, 351. 

Maine woods, 339. 

Manikins, 353. 

Manna-wise, 340. 

Mark, 356. 

Massachusetts Colony, 343. 

Massasoit, 359. 

Mast, tied to the, 353. 

Memnon, 344, 352. 

Memoirs, of Cellini, 366. 

Men want, 341. 

Mencius, 368. 

Mentors, 339. 

Method of fluxions, 350. 

Methuselah, 375. 

Merlin, 376. 

Metrical Romances, 365. 

Mexican War, 355, 362. 

Mexicans, 348. 

Michael Angelo, 364. 

Michaux, Andre, 371. 

Middlesex House, 358. 

Mill Brook, 357. 

"Mill-dam," 353. 

Milton, 355. 

Minerva, 344. 

Mirabeau, Gabriel Riquetti, 378. 

Moiling, 368. 



Momus, 344. 

Moore of Moore Hall, 365. 
Moosehead Journal, A, 359. 
Mosses from an Old Manse, 

351. 
More clearly, 352. 
More than if, 359. 
Morning, 351. 
Mortar, all, 348. 
Most fashionable, 342. 
Mount Parnassus, 365. 
Mr. Coleman's, 361. 
Mr. Grinnell, 376. 
"Mummy wheat," 342. 
Musquash, 367. 
Mussulmans, 378. 
My flute, 360. 
My mode, 349. 
Myrmidons, 369. 
Myself, 337. 

Napoleon, 369, 372. 

Negro, 338. 

Nervii, 372. 

Neva, 341. 

Never yet, 353. 

New England Farmer, 374. 

New England's Annoyances, 

348. 
New Hollander, 340, 371. 
New Netherland, 345. 
New Orleans Picayune, 342. 
New York, 345, 357. 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 349. 
Next excursion, 352. 
Nile, 353. 
Nilometer, 353. 
Ninth part, 345. 
Noisy neighbors, 3C6. 
North Reading, 353. 
Northwest Passage, 376. 



/ 



INDEX 



385 



Norway, 342. 

Not as wise, 353. 

Notch it on my stick, 340. 

Nun, 367. 

Nun's Priest's Tale, 356. 

Nutting, Sam, 373. 

Oaths, 359. 

Occasional visits, 357. 

O Death, 376. 

Ode to dejection, 351. 

Odin, 366. 

CEdipus, 377. 

Olaus Magnus, 369. 

Old book, 338. 

Old Cato, 351. 

Old Johnson, 345. 

Old Mortality, 373. 

Old Parr, 358. 

"Olive-Branches," 354. 

Omit the gun, 367. 

On the Massacre at Piedmont, 

374. 
On their trail, 340. 
Orpheus, 363. 

Paganini, Nicholo, 361. 
Papilli^, 375. 

Parable of the sower, 374. 
Paradise Lost, 355. 
Parcae, 342. 
Park, Mungo, 377. 
Parlaver (palaver), 371. 
Parsees, 354. 
Patersm, Robert, 373. 
PatrocliX359, 369. 
Peabody M^eum, 361, 366. 
Peck of dirt^38. 
Pecunia, 360. 
Peg-tankard, 356. 



Pellicle, 378. 

Pellis, 378. 

Pellucid, 365. 

Pencil-making, 340. 

Penn, William, 350. 

Percy's Reliques, 365. 

Periplus, 375. 

Perso-Iranian religion, 354. 

Peterboro' Hills, 355. 

Pfeiffer, 341. 

Phaeton, 349. 

Philanthropic, 367. 

Philosophy of India, 347. 

Picayune, 342. 

Pilgrim's Progress, The, 338. 

Pilpay & Co., 368. 

Plato's man, 360. 

Pluto, 363. 

Plutus, 363. 

Poet, 368. 

Point d'appiu, 353. 

Polk, James K., 370. 

Poor Richard's Almanac, 356. 

Pope, Alexander, 354. 

Posts, 370. 

Pouts, 356. 

Praetors, 339. 

Prelude, The, 350. 

Presburg, Peace of, 369. 

Prescott, 348. 

Princess Adelaide, 346. 

Principles of Political Economy, 

346. 
Printed, never yet, 353. 
Privilege, 366. 
Prostrate Saturn, 370. 
Pseudo-science, 375. 
Purlins, 370. 
Pyrrha, 338. 
Pythagorean, 362. 
Pythagoras, 362. 



386 



INDEX 



Quoil, 372. 

Race-horse, 346. 

Radicle, 340. 

Raisers, 345. 

Ranz des Vaches, S61. 

Rays alike, 363. 

Reading, 353. 

Realometer, 353. 

Redding & Co., 354, 363. 

Reliques, Percy's, 365. 

Remember, 367. 

Repastination, 362. 

Reporter to a journal, 340. 

Reticulatus, 365. 

Revelation, 348. 

Revolution of 1649, 352. 

Reynard the Fox, 356, 372. 

Ricardo, David, 346. 

Ricochet motion, 358. 

Right, 350. 

Robin, 376. 

Robinhood (Robin Hood), 371. 

Ross, Sir James, 377. 

Rumford, Count, 343. 

Rumford fireplace, 343. 

Run "amok," 364. 

Ruskin, 346. 

Sadi, 350. 

Saffron Walden, 365. 
Sakontala, 376. 
Santayana, 337. 
Sardanapalus, 344. 
Sartor Resartus, 341. 
Saturn, 365, 370. 
Say, Jean Baptiste, 346. 
Scimitar, 353. 
Scriblerus Club, 344. 
Scud, 373. 



Sense of Beauty, The, 337. 

Setting the bell, 352. 

Shadow aureole, 366. 

Shore, 365. 

Shorn, 365. 

Shorter Catechism, The, 338. 

Should greatly grieve, 359. 

Simples, 357. 

Sinecure, 341. 

Single G-string, 361. 

Sir Thopas, 365. 

Sirens, 353. 

Sixty-one, 364. 

Skewer, 368. 

Skip like rams, 355. 

Slacked, 355. 

Slave coast, 377. 

Slavery, 338. 

Slop-shop, 349. 

Smith, Adam, 346. 

So high, 374. 

Sociable, 357. 

"Society of Jesus," 349. 

Some thirty years, 339. 

Spanish main, 355. 

Spaulding's, 348. 

Spe, 363. 

Spence, 367. 

Spenser, Edmund, 359. 

Sphinx, 377. 

Squire Make-a-stir, 338. 

St. Helena, 372- 

St. Petersburg, 341. 

State of the Prisons, 349. 

Stevenson, 339. 

Stygian, 356. 

Suent, 343. 

Suminer, 340. 

Survey, 351. 

Surveyor, 340. 

Swine, herd of, 368. 



INDEX 



387 



Symmes, John Cleves, 377. 
"Symmes's Hole," 377. 

Tafferel, 376. 

Taffrail, 376. 

"Tailors," 345. 

Talaria, 367. 

Tally, 340. 

Tantivy, 354. 

Tare, 341. 

Tartarus, 374. 

Taylor, General, 355. 

Telemachus, 339. 

Tell, Wilhelm, 354. 

Tenoned, 345. 

Terminus, 371. 

Ternate, 375. 

Thalia, 342. 

The latter, 365. 

The other also, 372. 

The owner, 345. 

Their, 353. 

Therien, Alek, 359. 

Thomaston lime, 355. 

Thompson, Benjamin, 343. 

Thor, 375. 

Thoreau, 342, 344, 346. 

Thoreau : Poet-Naturalist, 368. 

"Thoreau's Flute," 360. 

Thousand hills, 355. 

Tidore, 375. 

Tied to the mast, 353. 

Tierra del Fuego, 340, 376. 

Tilian, 338. 

Tillage, 338. 

Titanic, 376. 

Tit-men, 354. 

Tittr, 354. 

To darkness and to me, 356. 

To the village, 363. 

Totem, 370. 



Town, 353. 
"Train-band," 362. 
"Trainers," 362. 
Transcendentalists, 341, 352, 

357. 
Translated, 378. 
Tremont House, 358. 
Tret, 341. 
Trig, 348. 

Trinity Church, 345. 
Trojan horse, 365. 
Trojan War, 369. 
Tropes, 371. 
Troy, 365. 

Trumbull, Jonathan, 344. 
Turdus migratorius, 376. 
Twelve labors, 337. 
"Two-legged animal," 360. 
Two years, 337. 

Ulvsses, 339, 353. 
Uncle Zeb, 359. 
Uncommitted, 351. 
"Uncommitted life," 349. 
Unio fluviatilis, 371. 
Usnea, 356. 

Valhalla, 366. 

Varro, Marcus Tarentius, 363. 

Vaughn, Henrv, 352. 

Ved (Veda), 368. 

Vedant (Vedanta), 368. 

Vegetable, 339. 

Venetian blinds, 343. 

Vergil's advice, 362. 

Vert, 371. 

Victoria Land, 377. 

Victoria, Queen, 366. 

Village, 363. 

Vishnu, 374. 

Vishnu Purana, 373. 



388 



INDEX 



Vitreous, 364. 
Vitruvius, 347. 
Vulcan, 371. 
Vulpine, 373. 

Wachito River, 352. 

Walden, 340, 341, 345, 346, 371. 

Walden Pond, 337, 339, 341, 344, 
356, 362, 374. 

Waldenses, 373. 

Walling, H. F., 364. 

Want, 341. 

Washington, 344. 

Wast Book, 373. 

Water privileges, 366. 

"We, sighing, said," 360. 

Wealth of Nations, 346. 

Webster, Daniel, 370. 

Week on the Concord and Merri- 
mack Rivers, A, 340. 

Welcome visitor, 373. 

Western Railroad, 352. 

Whalley, Edward, 357. 



What mean ye, 343. 

Wholesome to be alone, 357. 

Wilberforce, 338. 

Wild lettuce, 358. 

Wilhelm Tell, 354. 

William IV, 346. 

Winslow, Edward, 359. 

Winter, 340. 

Winter of man's discontent, 

345. 
Winthrop, Governor, 345. 
Wonder-working Providence, 345. 
Wordsworth, 350, 352, 371. 

Young, Arthur, 347. 

Zanzibar, 377. 
Zarathushtra, 354. 
Zenda vestas, 353. 
Zeus, 353, 371. 
Zilpha, 371. 
Zoroaster, 354. 
Zoroastrianism, 353. 



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